this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2024
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The fool's errand is trying to make the language consistent, when it never has been, especially trying to do it via spelling. English isn't consistent. It's not supposed to be. It takes pieces from every other language and integrates them into English whether it makes sense to or not, leading to inconsistency. That inconsistency, I think, is by design. It makes the language more versatile than any other, a "good enough" medium of communication for everything, but usually not the best, which for communication, tends to be fine.
The old "why try to do anything because it will never be perfect" argument never holds water.
That's not at all the argument I'm making. My argument is that English's inconsistency is, at this point, the reason it is successful. By integrating everything into it, it has become a good enough medium of communication for almost everything. That would not have been possible unless the language eschewed consistency.
Really, a better argument against changing the spelling is the classic "standards" xkcd, where now you're just making another dialect of English where they spell words differently again, and now it needs to be adopted, fracturing the language further. Honestly, though? It doesn't matter. Fix the spelling if you want. English can take the fracturing. The changes might take, they might not, but I doubt it'll make the language more consistent overall, for every fix you put in, you'll have someone who disagrees and doesn't put it in, making your dialect more consistent, but the language overall less so, but it doesn't matter. English will continue to be inconsistent, and that's okay, that's why it works.
Except that's not at all what we've done.
The only reason English dominates is because it's the dominant language of the world super powers following world war II. It's not because of some special design, principle, or properties.
English isn't just "make up whatever rules and put them wherever", particularly formal English which is what we're talking about in the context of education.
Language will evolve with or without direction. We have the structure in the form of schools to actually evolve it with direction in the name of making things more consistent and intuitive. We should use it, that's all.