English, unlike many major languages, does not have a major regulatory body in the vein of the Academie francaise. This means that while spelling and grammar are held to generally looser rules, this also means that English evolves more rapidly as seen in its absorption of loan words.
So what PoD or circumstances would lead to English being regulated with an academic body?
Gotta make the USA and UK agree on it at all. Although the simpler American spelling (color vs. colour) with simpler British words (lift in place of elevator) would be nice, actually.
Gotta make the USA and UK agree on it at all. Although the simpler American spelling (color vs. colour) with simpler British words (lift in place of elevator) would be nice, actually.
The problem is, most differences between American English and British English are on the British end and happened after the Revolutionary War. This means that any standardization would probably look more like American English than like British. Spelling is a bit different, as that happened on both ends, so I'm not sure which would become standard. Both the American and British dictionaries essentially just chose a spelling, as before there had been no consensus.
You don't necessarily need a single regulatory body for both the US and the UK. Chinese, Arabic and Portuguese are some of the most spoken languages in the world and have multiple regulatory bodies. Portuguese for instance have two academies, one in Lisbon and another in Rio and, despite the efforts of unification, Spelling in BrP and EP is not uniform and reflects the local dialects (that are much more divergent than AmE and BE.)
You don't necessarily need a single regulatory body for both the US and the UK. Chinese, Arabic and Portuguese are some of the most spoken languages in the world and have multiple regulatory bodies. Portuguese for instance have two academies, one in Lisbon and another in Rio and, despite the efforts of unification, Spelling in BrP and EP is not uniform and reflects the local dialects (that are much more divergent than AmE and BE.)
That's actually quite fascinating and makes this much more plausible in that sense.
We'd need both America and Britain to undergo some heavy nationalism, though - America perhaps being influenced even more by Webster's Dictionary or the like, for example.
Theodore Roosevelt thought phonetic writing was awesome. Andrew Carnegie funded the Simplified Spelling Board. I disagree with their views, because I actually tend to like fancy archaic spelling, but there were plenty of prominent (and in fact often rather intellectual) types who felt that this kind of spelling reform was a good idea. Webster's proposals also went a lot further than what was implemented in OTL, and his main motivation was... making spelling more phonetic. (Dropping 'useless' letters etc.)
Anyway, it would be really interesting to see several regulatory bodies for English, using different forms. A British and an American one make the most sense, in a TL that's more or less like our own otherwise. As @Umbric Man already suggested, some kind of nationalist impulse could be the cause for all this. Or should I say that a nationalist impuls would be the caus? Because if you want to set the two spelling methods apart, it's probanly easiest (and closest to OTL) to have the USA goal all 'Webster-style', and have Britain react by explicitly doing the opposite. So because the Americans go all "center" instead "centre" and "public" instead of "publick", you could have Britain standardise the opposite form. So they'd start using "membre" for "member" again, and "logick" for "logic" etc.
Other reforms could include include the USA going for "directer" and "dictater" etc. instead of "director" and "dictator". There's also the difference between "co-operate" and "coöperate", for instance. There's lots of little ways you could set various forms of spelling apart from oe another, without fundamentally altering the pronounciation. Although... it would be interesting if one version of English (I'm betting it would by British one) just went all-out, and went back to pronouncing words in an archaic fashion. For instance, pronouncing 'connection' not as 'con-neck-shun' but as 'con-neck-see-on', and pronouncing 'musician' not as 'mu-sih-shun' but as 'mu-sih-see-an'.
In any case, both version of the English language could easily end up being substantially being different from what we see in OTL. Going by various old-fashioned spelling forms and various suggestions made for spelling reform (mostly in the USA), the results could end up looking a bit like this:
British -- American
achieve -- achiev
acre -- aker
active -- activ
add -- ad
advertise -- advertize
advisor -- advizer
aesthetic -- esthetic
against -- agenst
aghast -- agast
alphabet -- alfabet
although -- altho
analyse -- analize
analysis -- analisis
anæmia -- anemia
answer -- anser
are -- ar
scenery -- senery
school -- scool
scissors -- sizzers
scythe -- sithe
serve -- serv
sieve -- siv
sleeve -- sleev
sleight -- slight
some -- som
sovereign -- sovren
sprightly -- spritely
staff -- staf
stead -- sted
telegraph -- telegraf
telephone -- telefone
thorough -- thoro
thoroughfare -- thorofare
though -- tho
through -- thru
throughout -- thruout
tongue -- tung
type -- tipe
were -- wer
wise -- wize
wished -- wisht
yeoman -- yoman
young -- yung
your -- yur
...it could also take countless other forms, of course. The above is actually a list I compiled a while back, just for fun. But it illustrates just how different from each other two versions of a language could look, while still sounding more or less the same.
The problem with that is that most of those spellings just seem wrong to me. It looks like the spelling of a little kid. And that's the problem with many phonetic spelling systems.
And many of these spellings are unnecessary. "Telegraph" to "telegraf" is wholly unnecessary when "ph" already makes a "f" sound in almost all circumstances.
As a matter of fact, a regulatory body tends to be pretty much against all kinds of reforms. If anything, it only solidifies spelling and makes linguistic evolution much more difficult. Take the French Academy for example. French clearly doesn't have the most predictable orthography (almost as unpredictable as the English one imho) and it is, in some ways, a diglotic language due to the prescriptive approach of the Académie.
If OTL serves as an example an English regulatory body would most probably keep English spelling stuck in the 18th century, unless you have some Ataturk-ish revolution.
As a matter of fact, a regulatory body tends to be pretty much against all kinds of reforms. If anything, it only solidifies spelling and makes linguistic evolution much more difficult. Take the French Academy for example. French clearly doesn't have the most predictable orthography (almost as unpredictable as the English one imho) and it is, in some ways, a diglotic language due to the prescriptive approach of the Académie.
If OTL serves as an example an English regulatory body would most probably keep English spelling stuck in the 18th century, unless you have some Ataturk-ish revolution.
I think the change should be spurred by Anglo-American enmity. America sets up an Academy of American Language and begins to spell things very differently than the English, perhaps with heavy German influence, while Britain moves into a more conservative language approach.
As a matter of fact, a regulatory body tends to be pretty much against all kinds of reforms. If anything, it only solidifies spelling and makes linguistic evolution much more difficult. Take the French Academy for example. French clearly doesn't have the most predictable orthography (almost as unpredictable as the English one imho) and it is, in some ways, a diglotic language due to the prescriptive approach of the Académie.
If OTL serves as an example an English regulatory body would most probably keep English spelling stuck in the 18th century, unless you have some Ataturk-ish revolution.
The problem with that is that most of those spellings just seem wrong to me. It looks like the spelling of a little kid. And that's the problem with many phonetic spelling systems.
And many of these spellings are unnecessary. "Telegraph" to "telegraf" is wholly unnecessary when "ph" already makes a "f" sound in almost all circumstances.
Of course they seem wrong to you; they seem wrong to me, too. But then, most of the modern Dutch spelling (Dutch being my native language) seems wrong to me, because I'm (when it comes to aesthetics!) an arch-traditionalist. If I made the decisions of the Nederlandse Taalunie (Dutch Language Union), all Dutch people would be writing Dutch as they did in the mid 19th century. The modern spelling is simplified, and when compared to the old way of writing the words... it seems childish. Yet it was implemented, an today... people just write like that.
If the reforms for English I suggested had been introduced in the 19th century, they wouldn't seem wrong to you. They'd seem normal.
(Nevertheless, I personally agree with you: I don't think simplified spelling is typically an improvement.)
