High Superior Infallible Lord Czar of the English Language
Somebody Has to Do It
We all know the English language is a mess. Too many soundalikes, too many words that have the same meaning, too many spellings that make absolutely no sense, heck, it’s a wonder we can communicate at all. Sometimes, I can’t take it anymore. Something must be done!
I am hereby volunteering my services to the English speaking world. I will take on the task of cleaning up English to make it easier to learn and use. Admittedly, it might take a few weeks to get everything fixed that needs fixing. And, there may be some radical changes for everyone to get used to, but, I believe it can be done.
I will require the absolute, unquestioned power to make the necessary changes, so it is imperative I have a title which will leave little doubt as to who is in charge of this. I propose “High Superior Infallible Lord Czar of the English Language”. Has kind of a ring to it, no?
I do not have a fully fleshed out action plan to remake English quite yet. However, I do have a few things in mind. For example, if I become the High Superior Infallible Lord Czar of the English Language, I would put the letter C on notice. Do we really need Cs? Couldn’t the C’s job be done by K and S? Perhaps we could keep C around by giving it a sound of its own. Like the “ch” sound. “Church” would be “Curc”. That’s a two-letter savings! Oh yes, I like that!
What’s with Q’s dependency on U? Stand on your own, Q. And, no more trying to sound like K. In fact, Q, you might have to go to the recycling area with C, because, really, isn’t your usual sound just K and W together - “kw”? The new spelling of a word such as “quick” would be “kwik”. Which would be great for business like Kwik Mart, Kwik Trip, and Kwik Cash - their signage could stay the same!
We may as well go ahead and enact a total ban on letters mimicking another letter’s sound. I’m looking at you, G. And Y. G steals the sound of J all the time. And Y often gets away with sounding like E or I. Under my autocratic but benevolent linguistic reign, there will be no more of that.
In theory, I am not totally opposed to letters teaming up to form unique sounds. Dipthongs and the like, may have value in a streamlined English language. However, I will strive for consistency. Allow me to illustrate: Consider the words beer, bear, deer, dear. See the problem? “Dear” should not sound like “deer”, it should sound like “bear”. I cannot be the only one who sees this.
This kind of opens up another can of worms, that is, “bear” and “bare” - two soundalike words with totally different meanings and spellings. Nope. Can’t have that. One spelling, one meaning, one pronunciation, per word. And, by the way, what’s with nonsensical sayings like “can of worms”? Who among us has ever opened up a can of worms? Canned worms? C’mon. English is crawling with senseless phrases. I guess I’m going to have to address that, too. Man, this is going to be more difficult than I thought.
It occurs to me that punctuation will have to be included in a cleanup of English. I find the misuse of apostrophes to be particularly nettlesome. They are used to indicate missing letters and show possession. The use of contractions requires apostrophes - it’s = it is, for example. But there is no apostrophe needed in the following sentence : “The snake shed its skin.” In this case, “its” is a possessive pronoun, like his or hers. So many people want to put an apostrophe in that “its”. Don’t do it.
There ought to be penalties for apostrophe misuse, but I haven’t decided on them yet. Handing out jail sentences for punctuation violations seems a bit extreme, but I can imagine two convicts talking about their shared plight:
Convict #1: “Hey, buddy, what are you in for?”
Convict #2: “Apostrophe misuse.”
Convict #1: “Poor bastard.”
Convict #2: “Yeah. What are you in for?”
Convict #1: “I used a comma when I should have used a semicolon. And, I tried to overthrow an election. Oh, and I stole documents belonging to the federal government and refused to give them back, and I tried to get a foreign government to investigate my political opponent. And, I incited a riot.”
Convict #2: “Damn, The Man’s going to get you on that semicolon thing every time.”
Convict #1: “Yeah.”
Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.
Be forewarned, to simplify English, I may have to complicate things in the short term. What do I mean by that? I might consider inventing new letters to represent sounds that currently do not have their own letter, such as “sh” or “oi”, although these could come under the “letters teaming up to form unique sounds” exception. Just be aware, new letters could be possible in some circumstances.
Another possibility would be to invent totally new words. Let’s refer to the “bear-bare” example from a previous paragraph. Instead of messing around with new letters and/or spellings, we could just change the name of the animal we call a “bear” to “blaf”. The NFL team in Chicago would be the Chicago Blafs. Or someone might say, “Hey, I got your kid a teddy blaf.” See? It could work. (C’mon now, no need to be snarky.)
I know there are plenty of other ridiculous things about English that could corrected or eliminated. No rational person could disagree that English is terribly messed up. It is obvious. I would like to believe it can be salvaged. I would also like to believe that I am just the person for the job. Anyone who has read any of my The Storm. By Norm posts, could deduce that I am a comma-loving punctuation geek and righter of wrongs, both large and small. (Okay, so maybe I’m not a “righter” of wrongs, maybe I’m an “identifier” of wrongs. Whatever. Who cares about semantics?)
I hope to begin this mammoth, but worthwhile project soon. Before I can get started, though, I have to get my High Superior Infallible Lord Czar of the English Language Certificate from the University of American Samoa. I am anticipating its arrival by US Mail very soon. Can’t wait!
