English started off like any other run-of-the-mill tribal tongue, but through the course of history it developed, even with all it’s faults, into a powerful tool for communicating ideas. It now has no rivals among all other languages. It is the language of medicine, the sciences, and the computer. It is nearly everyone’s desired Second Language. It is the de facto World Language.
However, its rapid spread throughout the world has brought a problem that should be addressed. English has become the root language of Universal English, giving rise to American English, Indian English, and others. Every language develops its own dynamic, and quite soon in linguistic terms the various forms of English will be as different as the languages rooted in Latin are today.
The solution to the problem lies not in trying to keep English pure – its strength lies in its very impurity – but in making its use universally comprehensible in its spoken form. We should remember that language was completely oral, until the printing press and education made a written form the normal means of communication between people, for hundreds of years. The written language changes very slowly and change is not a major problem except for grammatical purists. However, if we can not understand the speech of a person the effect is immediate.
Consonants change pronunciation very slowly, if at all. The vowel, the very heart of the syllable, that carries its meaning, is as fluid as the untrammelled air it is formed by. It can vary between parent and child, and be unrecognizable by people living thirty kilometres apart.
We must find a method of making the vowel sounds easily identifiable in the written word so that a speaker reading the words knows exactly how to pronounce them. Listeners would then hear ‘written’ words, not spoken English which is the most difficult form of English to grasp when spoken by a person who does not have your own accent. An “accent” is mainly the different stress and sound put on vowels in a language,
[...] The first post in the “Language” Category is HERE [...]
[...] The first post in the “Language” Category is HERE [...]