THE NEW ENGLISH

I went skiing yesterday and had the pleasure of riding the chairlift with a nice young man of high school age. He was a wonderful conversationalist and we talked the entire time that we rode to the top of mountain. Yesterday the skiing was excellent and the weather equally so. This prompted the young man to say that the day was "funner" than any ski day he had had so far this year. My first reaction was to act like my second grade teacher, Sister Alice Claire, and correct his primitive use of the language. Remembering that I used to describe things as "groovy", I restrained myself.

For some reason, the word "funner" haunted me the rest of the day. It was all I could thing of. I grew obsessed with it. We went to a party last night. I sat in a corner and talked to no one. I stayed up all night thinking about this one word...

Funner.

Why is it not a word? Did some Oxford University tweedy hoyty-toyty professor decide that we should ban the word from the dictionary? If something is "big" and some other thing comes along of a larger size, that second thing is "bigger". Why not "funner"? Or "littler", for that matter. More about these later in the post.

It has become painfully obvious to me that the English language needs a re-write. The reasons for this are twofold: we need to instill both simplicity and consistency into our language. 

To illustrate the need for simplicity, why do we still use the ubiquitous, phonetically diverse and complicated "ough" in our spellings? From my second grade teachings, this collection of letters can have six different sounds:

"Oh, oo, uff, off, aww, ow"

Here's an idea: Let's simplify and spell the word thought "thot" and though "tho" and borough "boro" or through "thru" or ... the list is endless.

Furthermore, we should take a look at the simplicity that is happening in texting language. While I don't personally send text messages, I do marvel at the evolution of this subculture of the English language. Perhaps it's time to incorporate some of the wisdom of its users who spell the word "great" as "gr8".

To these ideas, there will certainly be detractors.

To those who scoff at modifying the language, please understand that all languages naturally evolve. Cavemen did not suddenly start speaking the Queen's English. They started making guttural noises to communicate their needs*. 

* Much like the language still used by snowboarders.

A specific example of language evolution was experienced by me in high school English class. Then, under the guidance of the wickedly cruel Miss Isabel Harriman, we were forced to read "The House of Seven Gables" in nineteenth century English prose, no less. In short, the language of the time bore little resemblance to today's English (and it was a bugger to read).

I also point out that changes in spellings are not unprecedented. In England and in Canada as well as in other English-speaking countries, the words neighbor, favor, and labor are spelled differently that we do in the U.S., adding a "u" before the "r" in each case. Somehow, we dropped the "u" in favor of simplicity. The city of Albuquerque used to be spelled "Alburquerque" - the "r" was eventually dropped.

Why not do it again?

I also propose that, for consistency, rather than use inconsistent comparatives such as big, bigger and biggest, that we start using big, big+ and big++. Should something be described as small, the comparatives smaller and smallest would evolve to small- and small--.

After all, it would make English fun+. (Translation: funner).

Readers, enjoy your day.