Learning Illogical Languages

Creative education and problem solving was a dominant theme of my foundation years. I remember living through the shift from cursive writing to printing, having half learned the prior, just to have to relearn basic literacy again (in retrospect I think we did ourselves a favor). I recall the shift from the blanket verbatim copying of spelling words and maths tables, to the shift of sounding it out. Another highlight recall was when we were given some straws, cardboard and pieces of tape and told to make something that would maintain the structural integrity of an egg as is fell of the lofty height of one of our desks. 'Life' really is about solving problems with what you have/know/can acquire/can learn. This is even more so in NZ where we are so far from the rest of the world and with so few people, we have long history of DIY, improvisation, and make do. Generally speaking:

- In the technical world, machines are constantly improved, bigger, better, faster, cheaper, cleaner.
- In the scientific world a theory is open to improvement, refutation, alteration, dismissal.
- In the legal world a law is made, adjusted, redefined, replaced, clarified.
- In languages, its an archaic old pile of illogical exceptions, tradition, and inefficacy, officially moving at a snails pace, limping through bureaucratic reform, and popular knee jerk reactions. That is not to say people have not tried in the past.

The advent of the printing press, unsurprisingly, saw the first real functional standardisation of spelling in Europe in religious texts both official and unofficial. An early attempt to reform English and how it was spoken was proposed by ( another awesome Benjamin) Benjamin  Franklin. One might browse his reforms here.  A well known reform was that of The Simplified Spelling Board of 1906, and its 300 or so reformed words whom passed there recommendations to the then president Roosevelt. He then tried to introduce them without congressional approval. There was much official uproar from rich old white men in who Congress officially rejected the proposal, but much of the reforms were already in place. Go public go, with you 'colored' slaves of the time with separate 'coloured' fountain. An example of there work is here. There was  also a recent spelling reform in Germany in 1996, here. A massively powerful  modern example of American soft power and standardization is the spell check on your American word processor. For example is just changed the second s in my standardisation to a z.

I was of the opinion that language is a tool, nothing less, if it does not serve its purpose adequately, reform or replace it. But how wrong I was. I fell into the not uncommon trap of applying rational to cultural norms.
Language is not a tool, it is culture and culture is an irrational mess of historical forces. If you live in a foreign country where the buses are men, bananas women and computer androgynous, you just have to roll with the punches, get in line, and turn off you rational mind. The illogical reprogramming has begin.