this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2025
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hypothetically, let's say you were tasked with simplifying the English language. how would you go about doing that, and why?

to start with an easy one, the first thing I would do is eliminate silent letters from all words and make it so no letters share sounds. for example, example would become exampel. then, because x would no longer be around or at least wouldn't have that sound, ekzampel. I would also consider eliminating mulit-letter sounds like ch, and replacing them with single characters (probably the ones that got removed).

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[–] Thorry84@feddit.nl 1 points 12 hours ago

One common used approach is to limit the total amount of words. When a complex word is needed, a simpler explanation is used instead. Randall Munroe (xkcd) did this for his book "Thing Explainer": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thing_Explainer He only used the 1000 most common words in English to write his book.

There is also Simple English Wikipedia, where people attempt to explain stuff for people with a low reading level. That way they can improve their reading and knowledge base, which is honestly such a cool thing to have in this world. https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page