Let’s talk straight

Let's start with a joke

Let's talk straight

Let's start with a joke. A dear old lady went to an exhibition that featured modern art and looked at a painting that depicted a small dot connected to a larger dot by a thin line. She didn't understand it and innocently asked the artist what it was. In a condescending tone, the artist told her that it was a man walking his dog. "Then," snapped the old lady, "why isn't it?"

I was reminded about this joke some time back when I attended a press conference where Karnataka CM Yeddyurappa and Cisco chairman and CEO John Chambers spoke.

While one can always laugh at BSY, the more important question is this why don't we write words the way we pronounce them? I mean, why should some words be pronounced one way and written another way?

This may seem like a silly question, but consider this according to Wikipedia, there are anywhere between 500 million to 1.8 billion speakers of the English language worldwide.

English is also the lingua franca of the world of commerce and the Internet, and such is its popularity that China, one of the world's fastest growing economies, is aggressive about getting children and elders alike to learn English so that it can get a stronger footing in the world.

Such people, who are new to English, may be put off by a language with poor phonemic orthography that is, a language in which the written words (graphemes) don't correspond to the spoken sounds (phonemes).

There have been many attempts in the past to reform the English language. One of the first was a monk called Orm, who lived in the 12th century. In modern times, many illustrious people, including Noah Webster, US President Theodore Roosevelt, George Bernard Shaw, and others have tried.

Special mention needs to be made about Bob Cleckler, who has described NuEnglish, a language in which the spoken word reflects the written.

He first touched upon this topic in 1993 in his book Instant Literacy for Everyone. But, in spite of the efforts of many people, the English language has resisted change in the right direction.

But this is not to say that English is not a language that changes. All said and done, English is a vibrant language and has borrowed words from a variety of other languages.

In fact, Indians can be proud about their contribution to English. For example, the word shampoo comes from the Hindi word champu, which stands for a scalp massage. Cheetah comes from the Sanskrit chitraka, which means speckled.

Indian languages have also made indirect contributions to English. For example, the word cheroot comes from French cheroute, which itself comes from the Tamil churuttu, which means to roll.

Now, having contributed many words to English, shouldn't we Indians also try and make English simpler?

And once we simplify English, let's try to get the French to write Champs-u00c3u0089lysu00c3u00a9es as Shahnsay-Leesay.

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