Do u think English should be simplified and made easier to learn?

[Juliajuliajul]

I don't think so, because if we oversimplify the language we learn, it will become useless for real communication. I'm sure, that no language is easy to learn because they all have their own history and culture!

 

[probus]

Even if all of us here at usingenglish.com thought that English should be simplified it would not matter a bit, because it cannot be done. English is a living thing, constantly evolving. There is no way that anyone can limit or impose order on that process. Therefore English cannot be simplified; there is simply no mechanism for doing so.

 

[Tdol]

It usually is simplified for the lower levels of learning, but people require high level language for much of advanced language use- business, science, etc. Language is controlled by the speakers, so if English needs simplifying, then it will become simplified naturally. There have been a number of attempts to simplify it and they have all failed. Imposing things on English does not work- any changes needed will come from within the speech community, which includes both native and non-native speakers.

 

[konungursvia]

Also, I have a suspicion the complexity depends on the civilization's needs -- take so-called Ebonics, or Black American English, which has developed in parallel to standard AmE, but partly independently of it -- and it ends up that functioning in North America in modern times, even when segregated from white society, Blacks ended up needing all of the verb tenses and other structures AmE had -- not the same ones, but equivalent ones, and even more forms of the present tense. You can't get people who earn a salary or hourly wages to collapse their numbering system to the Yanomami "one, two, many" when they have a need to express things like "40,000 a year." I think you get the idea. [Edit: Spelling is another matter, and I'm in favour of modernizing it to some degree -- gaol?]

 

[Mehrgan]

Language is controlled by the speakers, so if English needs simplifying, then it will become simplified naturally.

So true!