English turning into globish
>>English becoming easier would be an insult to their native speakers and since I find English to be very useful I don't want they to feel bad.<<
This should read '...I don't want THEM to feel bad'.
Sorry for my mistake. I guess that easier English should get rid of these remanent inflections. Subject and object pronouns would be the same.
I -> to I
you -> to you
he -> to he
she -> to she
we -> to we
you -> to you
they -> to they
That would make it harder, increasing ambiguity. The less meanings words have the better.
In fact we should add cases to decrease ambiguity, and make it more clear what each word is meaning. You may find that surprising, but cases actually make a language easier.
There is no amgibuity. Word order and prepositions are enough to determine whether a pronoun acts as object or subject.
<<Word order and prepositions are enough to determine whether a pronoun acts as object or subject. >>
But that doesn't mean it is easy, or easier than cases. Probably half the world would find cases easier, and the other half would find no cases easier. So you can't simplify it one way or the other, so just leave it as it is.
English is evolving towards less inflection and more analytical . So why not accelerating this process?. Get rid of pronoun inflection!
How 'bout we just point and grunt?
>>This should read '...I don't want THEM to feel bad'.
Sorry for my mistake. I guess that easier English should get rid of these remanent inflections. Subject and object pronouns would be the same.<<
I can see why you thought it should be 'they' though, as you could think it was the subject. In comparison to German, at least, English has a bit of a weird construction when it comes to expressing a desire for some one else to do something.
Compare the following:
'Ich will, dass er mich besucht'. This translates literally as 'I want that he visits me'.
English however turns it into
'I want him to visit me'
To me this is another example of the greater logic of German as a language. There really SHOULD be two subjects in the sentence, as German shows, but English decides to turn it into a weird infinitive construction.
<In comparison to German, at least, English has a bit of a weird construction >
You're saying, in effect, "English is a foreign language, if you're German".
<<To me this is another example of the greater logic of German as a language. There really SHOULD be two subjects in the sentence, as German shows, but English decides to turn it into a weird infinitive construction.>>
Why should there be? Please explain the "logical" reason.
<<'I want him to visit me'
To me this is another example of the greater logic of German as a language. There really SHOULD be two subjects
>>
It also makes sense to use the object pronoun because in some way despite "him" acts as subject , it receives as well the action of me wanting him to visit me. In reality all languages have their logic, it only happens that in some ones it is more hidden than in others.
He wants it to visit him.
What does this mean?
a) X wants thing, in order to visit Y
b) X wants for thing to visit X
c) X wants for thing to visit Y
These three cases need to be differentiated.
a) He wants it for visit ghim.
b) He wants that it visited him.
c) He wants that it visited ghim.
The "ghim" means that "he" and "him" are not the same person.
The idea of allowing phonemic mergers in other languages to dictate English is silly, both in principle (why should we have to change?) and in practice. In Japanese, /l/ and /r/ are pronounced the same. In nonrhotic dialects of English, /r/ and /w/ are pronounced the same. In Indian English, /w/ and /v/ are pronounced the same. In Spanish, /v/ and /b/ are pronounced the same. And according to a previous post, /b/ and /p/ are pronounced the same in some languages. So, what, are we going to collapse l,r,w,v,b, and p down to a single letter? Sorry, but there's no simplified system that "everyone" will be able to deal with. Every language splits apart phonemes slightly differently, and pretty much every phoneme can be linked to every other one by a chain of mergers. E.g. /v/ -> /f/ -> /th/ -> /t/ -> /d/
To build on the point Another Guest is making, all this talk about ambiguity is rather pointless. If a language is ambiguous, people will make it unambiguous. The reason languages evolve organically is because people need to make the other person understand what they mean with as little effort as possible.
Yeah, you take Dumb's example alone and it's rather ambiguous, but in actual use, everyone would know exactly what you mean. And if there were any possibility they wouldn't, you wouldn't use pronouns for two different people in the same sentence. You'd re-identify the one you used least recently. Ambiguity doesn't exist in practice. If it does, it fades away immediately as people work around it during normal use.
Languages aren't designed. Period.
***How 'bout we just point and grunt?***
You'd be surprised at the number of people who communicate that way, especially in the 14 to 18 age group - my moody cousin for one....he gets by very well in Gruntspeak.die
I asked for directions from two hoodie lads in an area of East London some time back and I was gobsmacked at my ability to interpret their grunts and pointings and was able to get to where I wanted to go. Maybe that's because my own "pointing and grunting" days are not all that long ago in the past, which made comprehension that much easier, even if it was delivered in mega Cockney-cum-Estuary-cum Caribbean-cum Rapper style.
Drew:
"Languages aren't designed. Period."
Good point! Although the common sound set laid out in such detail a few posts back are fascinating [ thanks, by the way :-) ], any language that might be devised from them would surely, rapidly, evolve into regional dialects and the whole purpose be lost. I guess we just need to celebrate our linguistic diversity, in reality, and not try to suppress it.