this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2026
527 points (97.5% liked)

memes

22489 readers
2335 users here now

Community rules

1. Be civilNo trolling, bigotry or other insulting / annoying behaviour

2. No politicsThis is non-politics community. For political memes please go to !politicalmemes@lemmy.world

3. No recent repostsCheck for reposts when posting a meme, you can only repost after 1 month

4. No botsNo bots without the express approval of the mods or the admins

5. No Spam/Ads/AI SlopNo advertisements or spam. This is an instance rule and the only way to live. We also consider AI slop to be spam in this community and is subject to removal.

A collection of some classic Lemmy memes for your enjoyment

Sister communities

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] wrinkle2409@lemmy.cafe 19 points 3 weeks ago (21 children)

Dude, I'm trying to learn German and those goddamn articles are so infuriating. I wonder how difficult it would be for there to be a linguistic reform to make it simpler

[–] Airfried@piefed.social 16 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (15 children)

Quite the statement for an English comment. English spelling is nonsensical and in desperate need of a major reform. RobWords even made the case for using runes again as it would probably fix a lot of issues already. The language simply isn't made for Latin letters.

But I don't want to make this a sole whataboutism comment. Each language poses it's own challenges. I will say that changing how roughly 100 million speak is easier said than done and would destroy a lot of culture. It would be much easier to force everyone to speak a different language entirely.

Personally I don't think it should or could be done at all. Unlike a spelling reform that English needs desperately and German had plenty of recently. There is nothing wrong with a language being complicated but there's plenty wrong with arbitrary spelling if you ask me.

[–] wrinkle2409@lemmy.cafe 6 points 3 weeks ago (7 children)

My native language isn't English in case you were assuming that. I mention it because my native language has gone through a reform for the reasons of simplification. English may be shit, but it was much much easier to learn than the hell I am going through with German. Even Japanese, which I touched for a few years wasn't nearly as bad. The point of languages it to be simple and efficient, and they should evolve to that goal eventually.

[–] Airfried@piefed.social 6 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

My native language isn’t English in case you were assuming that.

I wasn't assuming that, don't worry. That's why I phrased my message like that.

I guess I agree to disagree here. Language is an expression of culture and heritage too. I would never speak German differently now just because of a reform. Neither would 99% of German speakers I assume. Yet we freely integrate English words into our language because it feels natural. These English words often come and go anyway so I'm not actually concerned the German language will become deluded from Internet lingo or anything.

load more comments (6 replies)
load more comments (13 replies)
load more comments (18 replies)