More off-topic drivel: Re: Language and English

You may have noticed, Sellam, that the Germans recently performed vast truncation surgery on their language, though I don't know much of the details. American English could benefit by removing many of those features that puzzle foreigners and natives alike, such as the features that allow one to presume that GHOTI is pronounced like FISH. That's GH as in enough, O as in women, and TI as in nation. If we could simply agree to spell through thru, as it's often done already, and tough as tuff, etc, it would be an improvement. Of course, there are still lots of possible syntax errors, e.g. there vs. their vs they're. I couldn't find it when I was looking for it, but I saw one net-funny that I received once, illustrating how that would resurrect the roots our language shares with German. If we could come up with an acceptable set of spellings and grammar that would meet everyone's needs, perhaps we could reduce the need for spell-checking our speech. Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: "Sellam Ismail" <foo(a)siconic.com> To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org> Sent: Friday, January 04, 2002 1:15 PM Subject: More off-topic drivel: Re: Language and English Festival ---- http://www.vintage.org www.VintageTech.com *