6 ms·

Why did Americans simplify and streamline the English Language, but they didn't bother with all of the systems of measurement?

chiph 12y ago
Now you know how hard it is to replace a legacy system. :) Actually, we're going the wrong way. The last highway sign I saw in metric was on I-95 northbound. They replaced it a couple of years ago (too old - the reflective material was worn out), and the new one only has miles on it. There's a short highway in Arizona (I-19) that is only signed in kilometers (it runs to the Mexican border), and there are calls to replace them all with distances in miles.
rsynnott 12y ago
Americans didn't simplify and streamline the English language, certainly not intentionally. If you're talking about the spelling thing, there were no standard spellings at the time when the US broke away from Britain; standards were independently created at a later date.
- emodendroket 12y ago
  Early American dictionaries deliberately set out to simplify spellings (and later editions made more aggressive simplifications that didn't catch on).
ajuc 12y ago
English is far from being streamlined. In fact it's the only language I know that requires you to learn how to pronounce EACH word. Most languages only require learning how each letter sounds, and maybe a few dozen di/trigraphs, the rest is regular. Not so in English.
- sswezey 12y ago
  You have to learn to pronounce each word with Chinese too.
  - Symbiote 12y ago
    To a point, but there are clues: 马 is mǎ, meaning horse. It's a picture of a horse, with 3000 years of adaptation. 女 means woman / female. It's a picture of a woman. Put them together and 妈 means "the female thing that sounds like mǎ", which is mā (a different tone), meaning mother. (I'm very much a beginner, but my teacher claims ~70% of characters follow this pattern.)
    - umanwizard 12y ago
      Yup, so in Mandarin you have a vague hint as to how to pronounce each word, based on writing. Same goes for English.
      - rhino369 12y ago
        For most words you can "sound it out" in English. There are just a lot of exceptions.
    - emodendroket 12y ago
      Yes, but these are based on how the words were pronounced when the character was created which means there is significant variation in the sounds the same radical is indicating.
    - doodpants 12y ago
      I'm guessing that the people who decided that those characters bore any resemblance to a horse or a woman are the same people responsible for naming the constellations.
      - Kronopath 12y ago
        That's because you're seeing them after literally thousands of years of evolution and simplification. 马, for example, is the simplified form of 馬, which is traceable back through the millenia to a pretty recognizable picture of a horse back around 1300 BCE or so. (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%A6%AC#Etymology http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%A6%AC#Etymology) Same with 女, which originally was a drawing of a stick-figure woman with breasts. (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%A5%B3#Etymology http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%A5%B3#Etymology)
- logfromblammo 12y ago
  No, you don't. You only need to learn separate spelling and pronunciation rules for each of the languages English has evolved or stolen from. The tough spellings usually come from Germanic roots via Old English and Middle English, whereas the French-Norman spellings are less difficult. Greek-Latin spellings are markedly less confusing when you learn the transliterations of the Greek alphabet. Of course Philadephia is pronounced with fricative 'f' sounds instead of plosive 'p' sounds, because the Greek letter for that sound is 'phi'. Because of that, I dislike it when people pronounce the feathered dinosaur archaeopterix as [ar-key-OP-tur-iks] rather than [ar-KAY-o-(p)TEAR-iks]. It isn't incorrect either way, because in English, correct is whatever other people will understand. (Suck it, French.) This is why I get sick of people complaining about "monolingual" English-speakers. The language has been glued together from Dutch-Germanic, North-Germanic, French-Norman, Greek, Latin, and centuries of absorbing and assimilating immigrant populations from all over the world. You really only need to learn rules derived from four dissimilar languages to spell and pronounce almost everything in English without having a word-specific association. The remaining ten percent of words are correct when spelled and pronounced as in the native language or as anglicized renormalizations, even using the rules specific to unrelated languages. That is why the plural of octopus can be either octopodes or octopuses. Octopi is colloquially correct, but it is then acceptable to deliver a short lecture on Latinized Greek words. Similarly, the acceptable plurals of cactus are cactuses, cacti, or (los) cactus (pronounced as in Spanish). As Spanish has an increasingly large influence on American English, I have found it useful to know that it only has five vowel sounds, and knowing how to pronounce burrito and enchilada correctly gives you all five. Despite what your elementary school teachers may have said to you, you are only incorrect in English if other people cannot understand what you are trying to communicate. Nevertheless, failure to be incorrect does not imply correctness, which is why grammar nazis exist.
  - nawitus 12y ago
    >You really only need to learn rules derived from four dissimilar languages to spell and pronounce almost everything in English without having a word-specific association. Don't you also need to learn the language from which every word is derived from?
brudgers 12y ago
American English wore off some of English's bumpy bits because there was no Queen's English or aristocracy to claim social authority for the status quo or sufficient influence to dictate a conservative rate of change. The Norman Invasion set the tone for a millennium of language as an explicit social standing in the British Isles. Throw in massive immigration and indigenous languages within and along its borders rather than overseas and American English simply adapted to more varied use.
lmm 12y ago
The language thing was basically one dedicated guy (Webster).
panzagl 12y ago
Because the Imperial system of measurement is simplified, whether it's dividing an 8 foot wall into thirds or the ratio of flour to milk to make a bechemel sauce.
protomyth 12y ago
Because of inertia. We have a lot of things we need to do and running up a huge bill to change something as fundamental as unit of measure is just not an economical idea. If we were going to do something as big as change UoM, why not go with the engineering estimate of 1 ft is now the time light takes to travel 1 nanosecond in a vacuum (about 11.8 inches)? It is sure better than "the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299,792,458 of a second". We could even base the new units of volume and weight off of the new cubic foot instead of 1/10 the unit of length. While we are at it, a national standard that all units of memory will be sold in base 2 would be a nice touch. // apply sarcasm as needed

chiph 12y ago

Now you know how hard it is to replace a legacy system. :) Actually, we're going the wrong way. The last highway sign I saw in metric was on I-95 northbound. They replaced it a couple of years ago (too old - the reflective material was worn out), and the new one only has miles on it. There's a short highway in Arizona (I-19) that is only signed in kilometers (it runs to the Mexican border), and there are calls to replace them all with distances in miles.

rsynnott 12y ago

Americans didn't simplify and streamline the English language, certainly not intentionally. If you're talking about the spelling thing, there were no standard spellings at the time when the US broke away from Britain; standards were independently created at a later date.

emodendroket 12y ago
Early American dictionaries deliberately set out to simplify spellings (and later editions made more aggressive simplifications that didn't catch on).

ajuc 12y ago

English is far from being streamlined. In fact it's the only language I know that requires you to learn how to pronounce EACH word. Most languages only require learning how each letter sounds, and maybe a few dozen di/trigraphs, the rest is regular. Not so in English.

sswezey 12y ago
You have to learn to pronounce each word with Chinese too.
- Symbiote 12y ago
  To a point, but there are clues: 马 is mǎ, meaning horse. It's a picture of a horse, with 3000 years of adaptation. 女 means woman / female. It's a picture of a woman. Put them together and 妈 means "the female thing that sounds like mǎ", which is mā (a different tone), meaning mother. (I'm very much a beginner, but my teacher claims ~70% of characters follow this pattern.)
  - umanwizard 12y ago
    Yup, so in Mandarin you have a vague hint as to how to pronounce each word, based on writing. Same goes for English.
    - rhino369 12y ago
      For most words you can "sound it out" in English. There are just a lot of exceptions.
  - emodendroket 12y ago
    Yes, but these are based on how the words were pronounced when the character was created which means there is significant variation in the sounds the same radical is indicating.
  - doodpants 12y ago
    I'm guessing that the people who decided that those characters bore any resemblance to a horse or a woman are the same people responsible for naming the constellations.
    - Kronopath 12y ago
      That's because you're seeing them after literally thousands of years of evolution and simplification. 马, for example, is the simplified form of 馬, which is traceable back through the millenia to a pretty recognizable picture of a horse back around 1300 BCE or so. (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%A6%AC#Etymology http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%A6%AC#Etymology) Same with 女, which originally was a drawing of a stick-figure woman with breasts. (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%A5%B3#Etymology http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%A5%B3#Etymology)
logfromblammo 12y ago
No, you don't. You only need to learn separate spelling and pronunciation rules for each of the languages English has evolved or stolen from. The tough spellings usually come from Germanic roots via Old English and Middle English, whereas the French-Norman spellings are less difficult. Greek-Latin spellings are markedly less confusing when you learn the transliterations of the Greek alphabet. Of course Philadephia is pronounced with fricative 'f' sounds instead of plosive 'p' sounds, because the Greek letter for that sound is 'phi'. Because of that, I dislike it when people pronounce the feathered dinosaur archaeopterix as [ar-key-OP-tur-iks] rather than [ar-KAY-o-(p)TEAR-iks]. It isn't incorrect either way, because in English, correct is whatever other people will understand. (Suck it, French.) This is why I get sick of people complaining about "monolingual" English-speakers. The language has been glued together from Dutch-Germanic, North-Germanic, French-Norman, Greek, Latin, and centuries of absorbing and assimilating immigrant populations from all over the world. You really only need to learn rules derived from four dissimilar languages to spell and pronounce almost everything in English without having a word-specific association. The remaining ten percent of words are correct when spelled and pronounced as in the native language or as anglicized renormalizations, even using the rules specific to unrelated languages. That is why the plural of octopus can be either octopodes or octopuses. Octopi is colloquially correct, but it is then acceptable to deliver a short lecture on Latinized Greek words. Similarly, the acceptable plurals of cactus are cactuses, cacti, or (los) cactus (pronounced as in Spanish). As Spanish has an increasingly large influence on American English, I have found it useful to know that it only has five vowel sounds, and knowing how to pronounce burrito and enchilada correctly gives you all five. Despite what your elementary school teachers may have said to you, you are only incorrect in English if other people cannot understand what you are trying to communicate. Nevertheless, failure to be incorrect does not imply correctness, which is why grammar nazis exist.
- nawitus 12y ago
  >You really only need to learn rules derived from four dissimilar languages to spell and pronounce almost everything in English without having a word-specific association. Don't you also need to learn the language from which every word is derived from?

brudgers 12y ago

American English wore off some of English's bumpy bits because there was no Queen's English or aristocracy to claim social authority for the status quo or sufficient influence to dictate a conservative rate of change. The Norman Invasion set the tone for a millennium of language as an explicit social standing in the British Isles. Throw in massive immigration and indigenous languages within and along its borders rather than overseas and American English simply adapted to more varied use.

lmm 12y ago

The language thing was basically one dedicated guy (Webster).

panzagl 12y ago

Because the Imperial system of measurement is simplified, whether it's dividing an 8 foot wall into thirds or the ratio of flour to milk to make a bechemel sauce.

protomyth 12y ago

Because of inertia. We have a lot of things we need to do and running up a huge bill to change something as fundamental as unit of measure is just not an economical idea. If we were going to do something as big as change UoM, why not go with the engineering estimate of 1 ft is now the time light takes to travel 1 nanosecond in a vacuum (about 11.8 inches)? It is sure better than "the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299,792,458 of a second". We could even base the new units of volume and weight off of the new cubic foot instead of 1/10 the unit of length. While we are at it, a national standard that all units of memory will be sold in base 2 would be a nice touch. // apply sarcasm as needed