How would you make your own language simpler?
Talking about Dutch I would change the use of the genus of nouns. Normally languages have female, male and sometimes neuter nouns. Dutch has two sorts of neuter forms. We combine female and male to one form but have preserved the neuter words. So if you compare Dutch to English and German, we tried throwing the genus out like the English did, but got stucked half way.
If I could change one thing about the English language, then I would always have it spoken with the Oxford English accent (Received British Pronunciation or The King's English), because it is universally well-understood by all native-English speakers.
It's non-rhotic; and if there were many words to be spoken with the letter "r" that is not followed by a vowel sound, then it can be spoken faster than a rhotic accent. The English language should be spoken more quickly in the same way that somebody's vodka martini should be more quickly served to him: everybody ought to have his vodka "martini" quickly "served" to him shaken ... not stirred.
For something completely different, that I was away from italki for three days, is no coincidence. I am a software engineer, and this language learning is fun, but I am really busy learning software programming skills now, since my tenure ends half January next year. I have to find a new assignment, and I have to improve my technical skills.
Su.Ki. Sorry I have been away for three days. I will explain:
The thing that happened to Dutch is that we probably had 3 genders like German. We combined feminine and male, in German 'die' and 'der' to 'de'. And of the neuter 'das', we made 'het', which is something like 'it' in English. There are still remainders since if you refer to a noun with a pronoun, you do not use 'it' like in English, but you used 'he' or she, like in German. Hence it is like:
De vereniging heeft problemen, zij heeft te weinig leden.
Die Vereinigung hat Problemen, sie hat zu wenig Mitglieder.
The club has problems, it has too few members.
So it is all half way, and looks like nothing. Either the genus should be in or out, not half there, but not really.
Englishrevered So how you don't understand them accent you want all speak the BBC?? British accent is so charming, cute, elegant... Saying that is killing a language, every person have own accent the persons from North don't speak like the persons from South. I don't see the problem of a person from Liverpool speak in that way, like probably a person from Texas like the way they speak.
Thanks for that explanation, EloquentwithRage. That's interesting. I hadn't realised that there was such a thing as a 'half-hearted' gender system. The Dutch seem such sensible, practical people - maybe you should do away with gender altogether?
Browsing the queries and mistakes that come up on this site has given me an idea for a tiny but useful change to English spelling. It is this : I would separate the word 'another' back into its constituent parts. AN + OTHER.
Life would be so much easier if people just realised that 'another' wasn't a mysterious word with a complex and incomprehensible relationship to 'other'. Nobody would try to use it with plurals or with uncountables. We wouldn't have three people per week posting queries in the Answers asking about the difference between 'other' and 'another'. It's just an other. One other. An orange. An apple. An elephant. An other. Simple as that.
And an - other thing : Sophia querida, don't you realise that Englishrevered is just teasing us?
