English is a pictographic language with 26 radicals

Re:English is a pictographic language with 26 radicals by kwhitefoot on Monday August 21, 2023 @06:14AM (#37207456)

People always seem to forget that English isn't one language, it is composed of vocabularies from multiple languages all used together. Quite a few words that people think of as English are taken from languages far away, such as shampoo, pyjamas, bungalow.

If people want English to have a stronger connection between spelling and pronunciation they can simply go for it, there is no authority that tells you how you must spell a word. Just be prepared for people to not understand what you write and to ridicule you.

And be prepared to defend the spelling of homophones that have now also become homonyms, such as straight and strait (strate?), might and mite.

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Re:English is a pictographic language with 26 radicals by bonoboTP on Tuesday August 22, 2023 @09:08AM (#37222179)

But then no language is one language in that sense. For example Hungarian is a mix of Uralic, Turkic, Slavic, Germanic etc. vocabulary. This doesn't make English unique. The somewhat unique aspect is then reluctancy to respell loanwords according to their pronunciation.

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Re:English is a pictographic language with 26 radicals by dpig_ on Wednesday August 23, 2023 @12:26AM (#37231869)

Yes, precisely. A language isn't a thing as such. - Chomsky, probably.

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