English 2.0

English 2.0 (aka Nü Ënglish)

A slightly serious proposal

Stephanie Dare

I don’t believe that English deserves all the hate that it gets. I believe that it is a good language. However, certain things related to it can no longer be left unaddressed.

NOTE: This document will be written in Current English, unless otherwise stated.

Let’s start with the alphabet.

The alphabet is an essential part of any language, Latin-based or otherwise. Here is a list of the 26 current English letters:

Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz (and previously, &).

Some letters in the English language, to be nice, are absolutely, undeniably useless, when you really start to think.

For example, consider the letter ‘C’; what sound does it make? It makes the sounds made by the letters ‘k’ and ‘s’. Doesn’t it sound confusing that not only does a letter make multiple sounds, but said sounds are already covered by other letters? It just doesn’t have a place in English 2.0. This, of course, would cause many problems, more than you may think, but let’s just keep things at the alphabet level.

Another problem is silent letters. There is no point in them, except unnecessary complexity. The most well known one, silent E, can be replaced with the accent mark ‘â’, or circumflex. At least on Linux (KDE), this is easy to type on any letter, by using the “English (US, intl) layout, or one of its variations. I recommend the “...AltGr Unicode Combining” layout, as it is easiest to use¹. Examples of this replacement could include “rôd”, “flâm”, “shâm”, etc, pronounced as “rode”, “flame”, and “shame” respectively. Because of how silent E works, the circumflex would most likely appear on vowels, meaning â, ê, î, ô, û, although it can be applied to other letters (although such cases would use their own accent), such as ĉ or x̂.

Speaking of which, we now need an accent for words that follow the rules of silent E, without actually using the said letter, such as “English”, or “Adrian”. Such an accent would be the diæresis (ä). While it would still most likely be used on vowels (ä, ë, ï, ö, ü), there are some instances, such as “Ẍ-ray²”, or “sẽẍ”, where consonants would use a diæresis.

Now, while I still mostly disagree with the idea of silent letters, I will make an exception when the word doesn’t look right without them. The word “T̈nager ” would technically be correct by the current rules of the language, but just doesn’t look right. The only solution to this would be yet another accent mark, the tilde (~). “Teenager would then be spelled as “T̈ẽnager”. While this still may not look right to you, that is simply a byproduct of a new language. This, however, we can both agree is better than the previous spelling.

Letters can also be added to the language, too. The þorn (þ) will be added and will serve the same purpose it did in þe olde Ënglish, making the “th” sound. Examples of affected letters would be “þis”, “þorn”, “þësis”, “þëory”, etc. The eþ (ð), despite historically being used in the same context of the thorn, will now be the letter designated to the “ch” sound. Usages include “lunð”, “trebüðæ”, “ðêsẽ”, etc. The ligature ‘æ’ is not acknowledged as its own seperate letter, but it is used when an ‘e’ is supposed to be pronounced as an ‘ä’. Accenting rules apply. Examples include “trebüðæ”, “hæ” (not to be confused with “häỹ”), and “whæ”.

The letter ‘g’ also loses the ‘juh’ sound that ‘j’ is supposed to make. Affected words would include “jist”, “anjelik”, “derânjẽd”, etc.

Spelling also keeps pronunciation in mind, as New English aims to retain all existing Current English words. The improvements of New English are mostly centered around written literature. Oral literature should be kept as similar, if not the same, as possible. For example, you may wonder about the word “character”. All current defined rules up to this point would mean that the New English spelling would be “ðäracter”. However, taking the new pronunciation rule into account, the spelling should be “kärectur”. It looks dumb, but trust me, this is the way to go.

Some letter combos are also phased out, like for example “ph”. The letter ‘f’ makes that same sound, so we don’t need it. An example would be “fônẽ”, “falik”, “Filip”, “foniks”, etc. As we discussed earlier, ‘þ’ and ‘ð’ are both in use to replace “th” and “ch” respectively. Double letter words, such as “letter”, “suggestion”, “overlapping”, etc, will be truncated to only contain one letter, with few exceptions. The replacements to the above would then be, “let́ẽr”, “suj́estyn”, and “övurlaṕing”. The acute (á) is used as a replacement for double letters; they indicate emphasis.

Current English’s #1 problem is the amount of overlapping words. Words like:

“wear” vs “where”
“read” (reed) vs “read” (red)
“principle” and “principal”
“colonel” and “kernel”
...etc

New English does not currently intend to create new words³. All that can be done is a direct conversion without taking pronunciation into account, otherwise they would end up being the same. An exception here, obviously, is the two versions of “read”. “Read” (reed) would be “rëãd”, and “read” (red) would be “rehd”.

To conclude, please take note that this is an ever – amended document. It is called New English for a reason. Suggestions are also taken from the community, so make sure to communicate any concerns or suggestions.

¹I have not found a Windows equivalent, and Macs probably aren’t any better. Phones also do not support free accents. All of these would need to be addressed if this were to become the new standard.

²May remove the diæresis from X-ray in the future.

³Subject to change.