Language is Living and Ever Changing
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,482
    It just hasn't been successful, so far.

    Webster was quite successful.

    And there's a lesson, too: He just did it. He didn't talk about it. Or propose it. Or argue for it. He just decided, and published.
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,980
    Webster was unique. He was in the right time and right place.
  • Carl DCarl D
    Posts: 992
    Yeah, Webster was in a culture which was looking to make itself different from its heritage as a British colony. These days, there's nothing similar. Just the usual annoyed language wonks.
    Thanked by 1CharlesW
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,482
    He was in the right time and right place.


    A lesson there, too.
    Thanked by 1CharlesW
  • scholistascholista
    Posts: 109
    I don't have a source at my finger tips, but I have read that the 'b' in doubt was added by orthographers to make it look more like it came from Latin.
  • MarkThompson
    Posts: 768
    This is true; the OED saith: "The normal 14th c. forms in Fr. and Eng. were douter, doute; the influence of Latin caused these to be artificially spelt doubt-, which in 17th c. was again abandoned in Fr., but retained in Eng." Likewise, debt: "ME. det, dette, ... from 13th to 16th c. sometimes artificially spelt debte, after which debt has become the English spelling since the 16th c."
    Thanked by 2scholista M. Jackson Osborn
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,482
    Similar thing happened with island, and many other words of Germanic origin which were assumed to be of Latin origin. Of course, the idea that there was a "correct" way to spell something in English in the 16th century is mildly anachronistic.
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,980
    I have heard the Normans did a number on English spelling long before the later "reformers" had a go at it.
    Thanked by 1ZacPB189
  • ZacPB189ZacPB189
    Posts: 70
    There have been attempts to find out what we would have talked like if the Normans didn't invade and we had no Latin influences in the English language. Like this one: Uncleftish Beholding, which is about Atomic Theory.
    Thanked by 2M. Jackson Osborn CHGiffen
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,980
    My ancestors that I met and knew when I was younger, would use words like unliving for dead, fence postes for fence posts, and such. Some of those were as old as Chaucer, so the local language experts say. Some of the Appalachian speech remained unchanged for centuries in isolation from the outside world.
    Thanked by 3M. Jackson Osborn CHGiffen Gavin
  • ScottKChicago
    Posts: 349
    There have been attempts to find out what we would have talked like if the Normans didn't invade and we had no Latin influences in the English language. Like this one: Uncleftish Beholding, which is about Atomic Theory.


    Love it. This site is fun as well. Seems like it would be easy to eliminate Latin and Greek derivations and use the Anglo-Saxon equivalents...until you actually try to do it. It requires reaching back for good words now archaic, and often looking to German and backforming an English equivalent. The site has a link to the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom in "Anglish." Lord, have mildse!
    Thanked by 1ZacPB189
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,482
    Like this one: Uncleftish Beholding, which is about Atomic Theory.


    The great thing about this is that it points out how much "science" is about giving Latin or Greek names to things, and pretending like that is helpful.

    element = firststuff
    helium = sunstuff
    hydrogen = waterstuff
    Thanked by 1ZacPB189
  • GavinGavin
    Posts: 2,799
    Or there's the XKCD diagram of the Saturn V in Simple English.

    Can you say "old ICEL"?
    Thanked by 1SkirpR
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