On the evolution of English as a written or spoken language.

'Ghoti' is a funny one; a great and ironic example of how English orthography is not as willy-nilly as some would claim. No one lacking serious background on its history would ever pronounce it [fɪʃ].Jon

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Check out No webpage found at provided URL: Apollo's Temple!
Ignorance is temporary; you should be able to overcome it. - nwr

The vocabulary and phonology is not as Germanic as it could be, but English prosody is still very much Germanic, as are the remaining few conjugations (past tense, for example) and inflections (-s plural, etc.).Jon

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Check out No webpage found at provided URL: Apollo's Temple!
Ignorance is temporary; you should be able to overcome it. - nwr

I have never heard that pronunciation before. For me, and everyone I've known, Van Gogh in English is pronounced (roughly) [vn 'go]. The [f] seems to be a British thing. According to Wikimedia, the pronunciation you are talking about seems to be: : [faŋˈxɔx]. Interestingly, they give an entirely different pronunciation for it in English than what I had mentioned above. I am doubtful on the English pronunciation they give, however, since English doesn't have /x/. This might be a 'cultured' pronunciation, but the average native English speaker would never make it.Jon

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Check out No webpage found at provided URL: Apollo's Temple!
Ignorance is temporary; you should be able to overcome it. - nwr

A way to answer this is to look at the difference between 'designed' languages and languages without 'designing'. For example, the Spanish language and French language have academies; German has gone through spelling reforms (e.g., No webpage found at provided URL: 1996 German Spelling Reform).The evidence seems to suggest that languages with designing are different from languages without designing in particularly the way you've mentioned: the latter are just good enough to get along; the former go much beyond this with focuses on form, tradition, etc. In this, I'd say that English (at least the orthography) is a fine example of Evolution, unlike some other languages which are examples of Design.JonEdited by Jon, : ... spelling...Edited by Jon, : No reason given.

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Check out No webpage found at provided URL: Apollo's Temple!
Ignorance is temporary; you should be able to overcome it. - nwr

See my post on language academies. Also, words disappearing or getting new uses is a linguistic process; one of the many processes through which language vocabularies change.Jon

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Check out No webpage found at provided URL: Apollo's Temple!
Ignorance is temporary; you should be able to overcome it. - nwr

Actually...The forms of English 'be' weren't always so irregular. What we have today is the combination of the paradigms of about two OE verbs both meaning roughly 'be'. One of those paradigms (inf. beon) went something like you laid out in the first list: beon:

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beo (1S)
bist (2S)
bi (3S)
beo (1/2/3P)the other: wesan:

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eom
eart
is
sindI agree with you in some sense: we certainly need heavy usage to maintain such high levels of suppletion in the paradigm of a verb such as PDE 'be'. But, this only tells part of the story. We still need to figure out where the irregularity came from in the first place; figure out why certain words are more subject to the processes that produce irregularity than are other words.Jon

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Check out No webpage found at provided URL: Apollo's Temple!
Ignorance is temporary; you should be able to overcome it. - nwr

But what happens when something frequently used stops being used and assumes a 'default' form, such as case endings? Do we say that the feature stopped being frequently used and was therefore subject to regularization, or that the feature began to become regularized and so was no longer frequently used? I'm not so sure. Evidence seems to suggest that the most frequently used forms are the ones most likely to be 'irregular'. It also appears that many of these irregular forms start out 'regular' and then become irregular. So, it certainly seems like there is a correlation between frequency of use and irregularity. What that correlation means in terms of causation, though, may be a different matter. At a minimum, though, higher frequency of use certainly makes possible more of the processes that lead to irregularities. Afterall, no part of a language can change without being used; thus the higher the usage of any given form, the more likely it is that change will be introduced.Jon

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Check out No webpage found at provided URL: Apollo's Temple!
Ignorance is temporary; you should be able to overcome it. - nwr

Isn't that the purpose of this thread? To figure out how the English we have evolved to be what it is today?Jon

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Check out No webpage found at provided URL: Apollo's Temple!
Ignorance is temporary; you should be able to overcome it. - nwr

I'm not sure how we could even begin to make such a comparison given that we are dealing with two entirely distinct media.Jon

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Check out No webpage found at provided URL: Apollo's Temple!
Ignorance is temporary; you should be able to overcome it. - nwr

I am trying to think, but I cannot conceive of a case in which such 'gh' is pronounced [f] that does not involve (at least historically/orthographically) a preceding rounded (labialized) vowel/f/ also being labial.Of course, the conditional doesn't go the other way for some reason; that's always puzzled menot enuff to investigate, tho.Jon

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Check out No webpage found at provided URL: Apollo's Temple!
Ignorance is temporary; you should be able to overcome it. - nwr

I think the people want to learn English (and other European languages) but their oppressive nationalistic governments, instead of serving the interests of their people, are more interestedoften by the advice of arrogant linguistsin serving the interests of their culture or nation.This is part of the broader worldwide Multiculturalism movement. While the people themselves would rather be taught the languages that help them in the world, global hippies continue to push for 'education in the native tongue' and other oppressive policies that retard development, putting cultures over people, with their only upside being that they will, eventually, make sure these languages end up dead and buried (as their speakers desire) instead of preserved.Oh; and what does this have to do with 'ghoti'?

You say 'required' as though they are being forced. The reality is that most want to learn the European languages. People who fight to push native languages into education are fighting against the wishes of those being educated, and if they aren't, they are certainly fighting against their best interests.And sometimes it is a big effort, since some languages need orthographies developed, textbooks written, etc.

No one is 'imposing the English language'. People are dying to learn it. Of course not. Cultures don't matter. People matter. If the people don't want their culture, or some aspect of it, then let them throw it away and pick up something they like better. It doesn't matter. The people want European languages, and European languages will benefit them most. It's time to stop the nonsense of 'preserving culture' and start helping people.

And because they can actually be educated in English since, you know, there're actually textbooks, research papers, and other educated people to talk to in English (and French, and German, and Spanish, and...).The people who want education in the native language are people who have already been educated in English and enjoy the International audience and opportunities they have as a result; and they turn around and fight vehemently to deny that opportunity to others.They are no better than rich Republicans with their 'I got my money, now screw you' attitude; except that the Republicans know they are fucking over the poor, while these language people have some twisted disease that tells them they are doing good.It's disgusting that these people put their academic ideologies over the lives of real flesh and blood human beings. Huh? People want to change their practices; speak another language; learn different worldviews.Should they be allowed to? Should a free democratic government fertilize that desire or attempt to drown it? Nonsense.It's about people who want to change something about their lives; people who have made the decision en masse that they want to learn in a European language.And it's about the people who will stop at nothing to make sure that never happens.

And that's a stupid goal that ignores the reality that Europe, its former colonies, and (increasingly) Asia have a heavy influence on the world.Have you read through my posts in some of the economics threads (such as: A Tree is a Tree: Growthmanship in the Developed World )? I think it is pretty ridiculous that in a society overflowing with plenty people still need to be fully employed making and serving useless doodads.But I still have a job.The students want to know why they're going to fail their exams. The answer is that they'll fail them because no one bothered teaching them the English they needed to pass them.Ideals are nice, but until reality matches those ideals, we need to be practical. And it's practically impossible to live a successful life without being fluent in one of the major European languages.