word up in Book Two

One of the podcasts that I’ve been listening to for years is “The History of the English Language.” I’m actually listening to it a second or third time through already. It puts me right off to sleep. But it got me thinking about spelling and how odd some of our words are. I was thinking - Wouldn’t it be nice if we just spelled words the way they sounded. English 2.0. I think there was some talk of doing this back in the 1970s.

China simplified their language not that long ago. We still use traditional characters in Taiwan. I like them. Then actually make sense some of the time. But China simplified their language when the vast majority of the population were illiterate peasants. The Communist government used to do whatever it wanted and the peasants said, “give us more of that.”

But then I thought, written English is a transitional medium. Like CDs, vinyl records and cassette tapes were to streaming music. They were the analogue versions. Computerization, AI and whatever comes next will someday make the written word obsolete.

Just a thought.