Saturday, 12 July 2003 | Bad English

After a discussion with my Romanian friend the other day, I've decided that I know what's wrong with English and with European languages, respectively. The following can be used as guidelines the next time someone invents a new, improved language.

ENGLISH:

No plural "you." It's not clear how many people are being addressed, since "you" is both singular and plural. To make up for this, English-speakers have made up their own ugly versions of the plural "you," including but not limited to "you all," "y'all," "yous," and "you guys." I nominate that the plural "you" be "yie." (Pron. "YEE.")

No special word for "yes" when responding to a negative question. In English, if someone asked you, "You don't like my sideburns?" and you responded "yes," it's not really clear if you do like the sideburns or if you don't. The only way to avoid confusion is to answer in a complete sentence: "Yes, I do like your sideburns." Both German and French (and certainly others) have this feature. (In German the word is "doch," and in French it's "si.") I propose that the negative "yes" in English be "aye" (although that might throw off the Scottish and Irish, who sometimes currently use that word to mean a straightforward "yes").

No generic word for the third person singular (when referring to a person). I suppose you could argue that English has the word "one," but it sounds ridiculously stilted: "If someone wants to eat a hot dog, one should probably reconsider." The word "he" has been used liberally until relatively recently, which, of course, is imperfect, as is the more PC-version "he or she." People often insert the less clumsy word "they" in place of the "he or she," but when referring to a single person, the word "they" is incorrect. I'm suggesting that the new word be "zie," as in, "If someone wants to eat a hot dog, zie should probably reconsider." (Pron. "ZEE.")

EUROPEAN LANGUAGES:

Gender assigned to genderless objects. I will concede that having masculine and feminine forms of the word "friend," for example, might be useful. But assigning gender to, say, "book" is only confusing and strange. The European languages aren't even consistent in how they assign gender; for example, "moon" is feminine in French and masculine in German. Of course, inconsistencies are bound to happen, since inanimate objects don't have an inherent gender. Therefore, I propose that genderless objects remain that way.

The formal "you." Europeans sometimes say that they like having the formal "you," because then it's possible show respect or familiarity. But if there is no formal "you," then there is no informal "you"; addressing your professor by the tense you use for your best friend is not impolite. And if your professor becomes your best friend, there's no socially awkward switch to make between the "you"s. (Europeans also sometimes admit that they don't always know how to refer to borderline people.) Besides, there are other ways to show (dis)respect. Therefore, I vote that there be no distinction between the formal and informal "you."

That's all I can think of.