Simplifying written English would surely benefit those who haven't learned it yet, but for many living native speakers, the quirks of our language, including its spelling, are an integral part of our identity, and before you mess with that, you'll have to pry my computer from my cold dead hands.

I'm vaguely familiar with two spelling reforms, the German and the Chinese. The German one took place after I had learned to write in German, and by and large I found it had a somewhat uglifying effect, creating spellings such as "Betttuch" and "Ketschup" taking away "daß," my favorite word to write by hand. The simplification of written Chinese took place before I learned it, and I certainly appreciate anything that makes learning Chinese easier, but I also suspect that the written language has been robbed of some of its charm; I mean, they took the 心 (heart) out of 愛 (love)!

Although Germans are still Germans and Chinese still Chinese, as an American, I would feel as if I had descended into a land of monkeys if I was made to read and write English as MJK suggests. Nonetheless, kudos to his forward thinking, but that's why I think English should stay as it is.

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Patience, grasshopper.

Color* as in: The color of that armor is gray.

I learned how to do some simple computer programming before I really had a firm grasp on spelling. The BASIC used with the Sinclair Spectrum got me into so much bloody trouble in school with those two words (no one bothered to point out until years later that these were "American spellings").

Or brass, hat, and shaft could all sound the same in your dialect, like they do to me. Merry, Mary, Marry. Caught, cot.

English is the world's best language for poetry.

What makes you say that? I have a hard time believing anyone not well familiar with a good number of languages is qualified to make such a claim.

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We don't know who we are; we don't know where we are.
Each of us woke up one moment and here we were in the darkness.
We're nameless things with no memory; no knowledge of what went before,
No understanding of what is now, no knowledge of what will be.

+1 to what Daal said. It's definitely frustrating to learn, but the way a word is spelled becomes an integral part of it's character. This isn't simple adversity to change because words become associated with experiences in the same way that music, smells and people do*, so even slightly altering words can have a profound effect on how we experience them.

*This is also why you should never spell come as cum.

Even worse, the formal grammars are typically either made up and tremendously inconsistent (some English professors and at-large critics) or openly admitted to be very incomplete (linguists).

And yes, the comment about word order was a joke. Supposedly some French politician said it publicly about French, but I can't find a source, so it may be a figment of my imagination.

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Occupy Babel!

I still chuckle when I hear reference to #1 here, because this seems to be the de facto phrase that native Japanese speakers express to non-native speakers they encounter. While it's a compliment, sometimes I would be a little frustrated with the apparent lack of sincerity in the statement.

To give an example, once my wife, upon meeting someone for the first time in Japan, simply said "konnichiha". I don't think she even got another word in before the native speaker interjected to express the obligatory, "Eeh?!? Nihongo wa ojouzu desu ne!" Now it happened to be the case that my wife had, in fact, studied Japanese quite a bit, but seriously? From a single expression? Can one really ascertain someone's level of competency in the language from something so simple?

It may be the case that my wife's pronunciation was good - she studies pronunciation much more than I do. But the situation still leaves me with a feeling of combined amusement and annoyance at the apparent lack of sincerity in the complement.

That being said, perhaps the same can be said of many "courteous gestures". If someone acts in a courteous manner, are they being sincere? Does it matter?

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be immersed

In my experience, the combination of studying on your own and exposure to native speakers and text is the best. I participated in a homestay in Nagoya awhile back, and while I certainly think it was very helpful both in my confidence and in increasing my language ability, it would have been much less efficient if I hadn't taken the time and effort to learn vocabulary and grammar independently. I can only imagine what it'd be like if I hadn't - it'd be like talking in Klingon with someone in a coffee shop, having never studied the language. They'd say some pretty funky stuff, and maybe I could figure out some patterns, but I'd be a lot more lost than the situation I was in at the home stay, having studied for a bit already.

It's probably the same with anything: You can learn go just by playing a bunch of games, but it's likely most effective to study, play, and do anything possible to contribute to your ability.

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be immersed

What! We have a heathen in the house! What about "Sumer is icumen in"?

Such rejections of our noble past make this bulluc stertheth and yon bucke verteth.

Rejoice rather and "murie sing cuccu!"



Not sure that famous song backs up the claim, actually. Hated it at school. Instead, I've seen it claimed that on the basis of the number of translations all round the world, the sheer number of annual piss-ups worldwide to celebrate his birth, and the fact that more native speakers can allegedly quote some of his poetry at some length than for any other poet - outdoing even Shakespeare - the Scots of Robert Burns is the most popular language for poetry.

I can't vouch for that of course, but I do think you may be a heathen if even as an English speaker you can't appreciate the beauty of the love for old JA and the lyrics in verses such as:

John Anderson my jo, John.
We clamb the hill thegither,
And monie a cantie day, John,
We've had wi ane another.
Now we maun totter doon, John,
And hand in hand we'll go,
And sleep thegither at the foot.
John Anderson, my jo.

Or appreciate the commuter's lament "when bughtin time is near": And ousen frae the farrow'd field/Return sae douf and weary, O.

English is pretty good... but the best and best sounding sounding poetry I ever heard was in russian. Its a very beautiful language I think, even better for poetry than english. Just my opinion of course.

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

Russian does have some fantastic poetry. But English is just more versatile. Russian suffers from a much more regular morphology with ubiquitous suffixes - as a result, the rhymes are less varied and overall the language is less terse than English can be. There's just fewer things you can do in a given number of syllables.

In french, grammar is a nightmare, so writing competitions are more on whole texts, rather that spelling of individual words, with a lot of grammar pitfalls.

Ok, slightly of topic, but here are my favourites traps/oddness in french:

J'en doute: I doubt it (easy, isn't it ?)
Je m'en doute : I suspected as much.

There a 3 words that are masculine when singular and feminine when plural:
amour, delice, orgues.

Something i just found on the internet and that is really crazy:

"gens" (people) is generally plural masculine, BUT if the adjective just before as a different form between masculine and feminine, then the whole syntactic group is put ot the feminine plural:

Toutes ces vieilles gens:all those old people. ("Tous ces vieux gens" is impossible for a native speaker)
Tous ces braves gens: all those good people (has a bonus weirdness translating brave by ... brave would be wrong here)

(because adjective "brave" have the same form for masculine and feminine)

I would have say it that way, but i would not know how to explain it.



As for poetry, i think the best language is your native language because you really need to appreciate the finer nuances.

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In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.

Two things:
First, in french, s'en + verb is a pretty regular contsruction that can change the sense of the verb, though I don't recall textbooks really mentioning it, and is very different from clitic 'en' in that way.

The thing that always got me about french is that pronouns are taught as if they are words like 'I', 'you', etc. in english, but they're really verb agreement indicators just the same as le, la, y, en, lui, etc.

Second, my favourite language for poetry is Ancient Greek, hardly my first language. I can honestly say I did not really understand the appeal of poetry until I read greek poetry.

Was this before or after you read Aristotle on the art of poetry?

With regards to poetry, my personal opinion is that Chinese is much better suited than English. I can't say how Chinese compares with other languages as I'm not fluent in any other languages, but I imagine it would be pretty tough to beat.

I never read it in depth to be honest. I think it was the clarity of structure that attracted me, as I was especially appreciative of epic and lyric poetry, more so than the dramas.

My impression is that English is currently somewhat poorly suited to poetry, as a great deal of poetry is about working within restriction and modern English poetry seems to be very much about throwing away "artificial" restrictions.

With Greek, at least, perhaps what I liked most was it's suitability to memorization. When poetry becomes about the form of the words on a page as opposed to the sound, cadence, and meaning, my interest is lost. That may be an art, but it's a visual one and not a linguistic one as much.

I think that just means modern poetry is poorly suited for poetry.