Re: My Final Thoughts on English

David Peterson wrote:
>    Well, I have a solution (possibly, "the" solution).  Don't confuse
>American English with English?  Fine.  Then no more!  Let's all start now
to
>actively split up this monster.  You can go by countries, or you can go by
>regions, but let's all admit that we all speak different languages,
Dialects.  There's still pretty good _mutual_ intelligibility-- aside from a
few back-country areas (in every country! ) where phonological/lexical
change and slang make things difficult.

or at
>least that we're fast approaching that point.  Thus, once we're all in our
>little language groups (North Irish, English, East American, Southwest
>American, Australian, Canadian), we can start to standardize our individual
>spelling systems, and there will be absolutely no problems.
>    For a little while, at least.

Perhaps the Chinese model would be appropriate:  let the individual areas go
their own way, but retain the traditional spelling for the written language.
That way, everyone could be unhappy about something, but not for
"imperialistic" reasons.   Added advantage:  those who aspire to
international acceptance would have to learn some historical linguistics, to
understand how their particular vernacular relates to the written form :-)

Seems to me that's how it works at the moment:  nobody has any difficulty
reading these e-mails-- but if we were to be writing them in our individual
varieties, Omigod.

If every region develops its own orthography, then the English-speaking
world will end up like the Romance/Germanic/Slavic/ Indic worlds; and there
goes "English" as an international vehicle.  Though whether that could
happen in this age of instant communication and easy travel is another
matter.