Random Thread - Anything Goes

tonyshowoff

My master thesis was on the concept of an English language academy, and I argued that America should have its own and not give a damn what Britain said about it, largely because of arguments like "whose accent?" are stupid and irrelevant, even many Indians want to speak with American accents now rather than British ones. It was more elegantly put, I just think that argument is sort of a cop out to any discussion and in the English speaking world who matters more, Britain and her countless god awful accents or America and her several god awful accents?

This isn't a new concept because originally there was an American language academy called American Academy of Language and Belles Lettres which described itself as having the purpose of establishing a unified grammar, spelling, typeset standard system for the entire country. They were biggest until the late 1820s. Thomas Jefferson was involved and years earlier Benjamin Franklin not only promoted the idea but promoted his own ideas to reform spelling to create a unique American spelling system, to be called American, not English.

I think one of the biggest mistakes made was not adopting this, because it would saved millions in education because far less time would have been used to learn spelling and more to learn essentially anything else remotely more useful. Most people who don't speak a language aside from English don't realise most languages could never have spelling bees because most things are spelled regularly, even if not perfectly. I think spelling bees are hilariously overrated and really only demonstrate that you can do what my computer can do far better. I also went into other things, unfortunately I don't have a digital form nor a scanner, but it's a boring read for probably most people.

I'm still in favour of the idea and I think that there would likely be a ruling for fewer vs less in some place in between, because Robert Baker's original suggestion is too broad and far too potentially ambiguous, because his understanding of his own generalisations were wrong. "Fewer" as a word has come into general use, but with varying meaning like "less" has, and it would be interesting to see how they could be defined and along which lines.

scottalanmiller

I'm not a fan of language academies, but I am a fan of an official language for a country. Meaning like the US should have a formal standard that education is to follow. Rather than allowing every teacher to teach my personal opinion.