Lou, What you propose for our professions has long since been adopted for others. For example, the English of maritime shipping, called "Seaspeak," was created in 1982-1983, including not only restricted vocabularies, but also structured ways of speaking appropriate to maritime affairs. International aviation has a subset of English all its own, prescribed by the ICAO.
"BASIC" (British American Scientific International Commercial) English was created in the late 1920's for the purpose of providing an easily understood English of fixed syntax and reduced vocabulary -- 850 words. You may remember hearing BASIC English used for certain broadcasts of the Voice of America. These English variants have two common features: They strip away duplication of words and they simplify structure to the point of formula. They do nothing for English spelling. It seems to me that we _here_ require more flexibility than ICAO English or Seaspeak provide, and while BASIC English might perhaps form a good model for international papers, I think it unsatisfactory for speaking, or for this forum. I would find it almost impossible to fit my own writing to BASIC; I'd need a translation program to make my posts follow the rules it adopts. And BASIC takes noticeably longer than American or British English to say the same things. If we merely seek equity, of course, it is enough that all be equally handicapped, but I think we seek, more than fairness, clarity. As to spelling, it's worth noting that the odd spelling of many words in English is not due to English being screwy -- but that we have preserved the spelling of languages from which English borrowed those words. By rights, we should spell "Paris" as "Paree." Your own name would suffer, I daresay, a similar fate. If you want a rebellion, regularize English spelling; I will make money, selling tickets to the event. Can we not instead let courtesy substitute for a ruler-wielding grammarian? If someone does not understand what we say, we should accommodate ourselves to >that< person's level of understanding -- or even (gasp) use that person's language, if we can. And if he who misunderstands comes from an English-speaking land, and is a graduate of approved courses of his own native tongue -- let's go after his teachers. Hmm? Cheers, Cortland ====================== Original Message Follows ==================== >> Date: 25-Mar-00 17:22:17 MsgID: 1070-77799 ToID: 72146,373 From: Lou Gnecco >INTERNET:[email protected] Subj: A modest proposal. Chrg: $0.00 Imp: Norm Sens: Std Receipt: No Parts: 1 List-Post: [email protected] Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2000 20:14:51 -0500 From: Lou Gnecco <[email protected]> Subject: A modest proposal. Reply-To: Lou Gnecco <[email protected]> Group: Having subscribed to this group for over a year now, I am really impressed by how easily we hold technical "bull sessions" with emc engineers from all over the world. This is a fabulous service of the ieee. There is only one problem with it: ya gotta speak english. If an engineer can't speak english, he or she is really handicapped nowadays. Like it or not, it has become the "de facto" world language. But english is a very hard language to learn. Linguists rank it up there among the most difficult in the world. Our spelling is really screwy, for one thing. I hate to see some of our overseas clients - smart people and good engineers - having to struggle with the inconsistencies of the language. Many of our own college graduates have problems with grammar and spelling. As a communications engineer, i can tell you that this is not a good situation. I think we ought to simplify it. If we can virtually eliminate the word "he" and erase the suffix "-man" due to political correctness, we certainly can substitute "thru" for "through" and "enof" for "enough" and make a few simple changes like that. Maybe there ought to be a new European Standard: a simplified version of English for international use. Sort of a "CE-Mark" version of English to make life a bit it easier for the rest of the world, and to encourage more smart people to participate in valuable forums like this one. Comments welcomed. Regards, LOUIS T. GNECCO M.S.E.E., PRESIDENT TEMPEST INC. 112 ELDEN ST. HERNDON VIRGINIA 20170 (703)"TEMPEST" (836-7378) CERTIFIED ELECTROMAGNETIC COMPATIBILITY ENGINEER CERT. # EMC-000544-NE CERTIFIED ELECTROSTATIC DISCHARGE CONTROL ENGINEER: CERT.# ESD-00143-NE ------------------------------------------- This message is from the IEEE EMC Society Product Safety Technical Committee emc-pstc discussion list. To cancel your subscription, send mail to: [email protected] with the single line: unsubscribe emc-pstc For help, send mail to the list administrators: Jim Bacher: [email protected] Michael Garretson: [email protected] For policy questions, send mail to: Richard Nute: [email protected] ====================== End of Original Message ===================== ------------------------------------------- This message is from the IEEE EMC Society Product Safety Technical Committee emc-pstc discussion list. To cancel your subscription, send mail to: [email protected] with the single line: unsubscribe emc-pstc For help, send mail to the list administrators: Jim Bacher: [email protected] Michael Garretson: [email protected] For policy questions, send mail to: Richard Nute: [email protected]
