On English-Prime

[joshu]

I’d like to share some thoughts that I have on the topic of modifying the English language to improve its precision and usefulness, following in the tradition of an English-language modification called E-Prime.

To summarize the Wikipedia article I linked above, E-Prime eliminates the word “to be”. To me, this seemed at first blush (a) extremely difficult, (b) really fascinating as an exercise of thought and language, and (c) unnecessarily austere. I don’t think my mind has changed on any of these three points, so I’ll try to go through them:

I have a lot of difficulty speaking without using the verb “to be”. I find writing a lot easier, probably because my writing always involves some revision and rewording when I find a sentence doesn't flow the way I would like it to. Speaking seems more awkward, because it entails stopping mid-sentence to rephrase a sentence that wouldn't end well without the expected “is” or “was” or “am”. Still, I find it difficult, not impossible, and I sometimes have fun with it as a linguistic experiment.

I find E-Prime valuable and interesting because it effectively cuts away a lot of the dressing in our language that makes us seem like we speak objectively. In many cases, opinions become a lot more obvious as just that. In addition, I’ve found that sometimes it makes me uncomfortable to communicate in E-Prime among speakers of conventional English, because it sounds like I have some sort of massive ego: most of my sentences wind up starting with “I”, and often “I find”, or “I think”, or “I have the opinion that”. I don’t consider this aspect more of a problem than normal language usage, but I find it interesting in that it highlights the fact that when we speak, we speak from our experience. In my case, it makes me more mindful, which I think overall is a good thing.

I think, though, that in aiming for mindfulness and clarity, E-Prime uses an axe where a scalpel (or at least a knife) would provide more utility: E-Prime, as stated, would remove entire tenses from the English language: the progressive (“I was running”, “she’s eating”, “they’re going to Canada”), and even the often-disparaged passive, which I think can have a particularly mindfulness/clarity benefit in that it can reframe a sentence in terms of your experience. Additionally, eliminating “be” doesn’t help one of my large problems with modern speech, namely the use of “good”, “bad”, and other such overloaded terms. A friend of mine who I regularly discuss this with has counseled me that it might help our language to largely avoid all attributives, saying:

[…] almost always, even though it takes more words to describe effects that way, [doing so] clarifies my thinking about the subject in a way that justifies the extra words.

“Extra words” feels true to me especially after writing this email, but if I have one message to send today, try this exercise out! My modified E-Prime consists of:

• avoid “to be” except in verbal constructions
• avoid adjectives with fuzzy meanings like “bad”, “good”, “right”, “wrong”, and instead try to explain your meaning.
• take care with your speech, and think hard

happy speaking!