May 22, 2008
Can the government change the way we spell?
Portugal’s parliament has voted to introduce contentious changes to the Portuguese language in order to spell hundreds of words the Brazilian way.
The agreement standardises numerous spellings and adds three letters - k, w and y - to the alphabet.
A large majority of lawmakers backed government proposals to phase in the changes during the next six years.
But a petition against the move was signed by 33,000 people who argue it is a capitulation to Brazilian influence.
I can’t speak for the Portuguese - or the Brazilians - but spelling reform for English never struck me as terribly sensible. (Here’s a debate on the subject.) That’s not what interests me about this: what’s interesting is to what extent a government can effectively change the way a language is spelt.
Whether we write “colour” or “color” or even “kulla” is simply a matter of coordination on different focal points. Government action might successfully shift the equilibrium, or might fail completely to do so, or might just confuse matters (surely the worst of all worlds). I have heard that German spelling reform has largely achieved the miserable third outcome, which is not a huge surprise. Governments can, at least, legislate what is taught in schools. I am not convinced that this would be very effective. Any thoughts?
Dutch spelling is revised every decade or so by an official body appointed by the governments of the Netherlands and Flanders. This then becomes the official spelling, which everyone has to use.
There is always some argument about whether certain aspects are improvements or not, but it’s basically accepted.
It does mean, however, that Dutch speakers are sometimes suspicious when you try to persuade them that some English words can be spelled in different ways and that there isn’t always a universally ‘correct’ version.
Posted by: Ted | May 22nd, 2008 at 12:39 pm | Report this commentMany, perhaps most, langauges have some form of government backed spelling (or writing for Chinese, Japanese & Korean). In Spanish, for instance, the official version of the language is managed as a co-operative effort by 20 or so National Academies of the language.
In English we have the competing unofficial standards of the Oxford Dictionary and Websters to remind us that the British (plus de facto the rest of the Commonwealth) are divided from the United States by a common language. That unsupervised arrangement may have something to do with the extraordinary competitive success of English in the last 50 or 60 years. (Can’t think of how to test that hypothesis.) So a government or governments which tried to regulate English spelling would probably fail because they would still be competing against an unregulated standard.
Posted by: David Heigham | May 22nd, 2008 at 3:28 pm | Report this commentIsn’t English is the only major world language that doesn’t have an official body to regulate it. Our major linguistic project, the OED, is DESCRIPTIVE instead of prescriptive.
Did this enable the overwhelming success of English or is a privilege that results from being the overwhelmingly successful language?
A lot of cultures and languages feel themselves at risk of being assimilated so they start passing laws to exclude foreign words. Meanwhile, English freely borrows and steals words from other languages with no concern that it’ll become too frenchfied or japanified or whatever.
The problem with attempting to legislate terminology is that to realize that you need to assign something an official word, it needs to have been important enough to catch your notice, which means that people are already using their own word in spite of you. Legislation is in perpetual catch-up.
Posted by: Tim Maly | May 22nd, 2008 at 5:02 pm | Report this commentRight or Write or is it rite. We need to simplify the language.
Posted by: Eric | May 22nd, 2008 at 7:54 pm | Report this commentI suppose it’s the classic case of market regulation in Britain versus government regulation in Europe. As other commenters have noted, most other official state languages probably have appointed bodies responsible for official spelling and grammar.
Beyond these institutional differences, the approaches to spelling policy vary widely among the government regulators as well, especially with regard to their attitude towards foreign influences. Some, such as Icelandic, make up their own words for every new technological invention, while others are content to use e.g. English words with their original spelling.
Norwegian has usually adopted words from English or other languages, often using their original spelling. However, the language council occasionally tries to norwegianise such loan words, changing the official spelling of champagne to “sjampanje”, or fight to “fait”. Both of these were introduced at the latest reform in 1997 and have yet to catch on, as most established writers stick to what they know. However, older reforms suggest that over time you can change the way people write as younger people learn them when they start writing, provided that the teachers are loyal to the language council’s decisions.
Posted by: toao | May 23rd, 2008 at 12:05 pm | Report this commentWith the possible exception of copy-editors who spend more time than they’d like arguing style guides with authors, I suspect that anyone who grew up with an “unregulated” language will find the idea of regulation at least a bit silly, and anyone who grew up with a “regulated” language will at least think it no big deal.
In other words, I suppose, you don’t need Schelling points if you have pre-agreed a policy, and if your democratic bodies provide a canonical source of correct language, that’s effectively what you’ve done.
I suspect that language reform in England would have little effect. Most people have fairly - shall we say - idiosyncratic use of the language, and I don’t see plural apostrophes disappearing just because Gordon Brown says they’re wrong.
In any case, we all have this nagging feeling that state control of language is potentially double plus ungood. But then, Orwell was an English speaker. Maybe that aspect of Nineteen Eighty-Four is completely lost on the Dutch and Portugese, who have already accepted total state control of the domain of political discourse
Posted by: SteveJ | May 23rd, 2008 at 12:30 pm | Report this commentGovernment action converted us (the British) to the metric system, didn’t it? Having been to school in the 1980s, I feel much more comfortable with metres and litres than I do with yards or pints - and I have almost no clue about ounces, pounds and gallons. So government intervention on these things is at least possible.
Posted by: Rob Fuller | May 25th, 2008 at 10:30 pm | Report this commentIt’s certainly far too late for English to become standardized by setting up some government body.
If there is simplification or standardization in the future for English speakers, it’s more likely to come about due to technology than anything else. That’s the point I’d like to make B4 END MSG 2U THX
Posted by: ZBicyclist | May 27th, 2008 at 8:11 pm | Report this commentI agree with Tim Harford, and prefer colour to color, humour to humor, etc etc etc. The Brazilian imposition on the Portuguese is fascinating.
Posted by: James Canning | May 28th, 2008 at 12:17 am | Report this commentenglish is a living organic language that grows and evolves to meet users needs. regulation in france and germany garantees their irrelevancy.
text messaging and email have had a great effect in discarding unnecessary grammar and spelling.
keep english live.
Posted by: canyonal | May 28th, 2008 at 7:28 am | Report this commentI agree with Tim Harford that such policies might not be “very effective.” However, I would approach the issue from the premise that Governments neither have the property rights on the language of the nation (and not state) nor do governments have the duty to protect the language, it is not a national security issue. Health, education, law and order are.
As Tim points out, of course, governments can legislate on how those who work for the state should spell. Even if this is petty and inefficient.
Basically, language is not, in my opinion, the business of government and to make it so would be manipulative. How individuals choose to communicate between themselves is a matter for the individuals. And of course, Language is a natural and evolutionary process, it should stay that way.
Posted by: lawlang | June 1st, 2008 at 10:26 am | Report this comment