<aside> 💡 Crazy proposition for an English that feels more like Vietnamese.
</aside>
Update 2013/12/24: Thanks @cmptig for some spelling/grammar corrections.
In linguistics, people often speak of the analytic/synthetic distinction, which is a scale that is used to judge how languages incorporate grammatical ideas into words. English and German are considered to be synthetic. That means they synthesize, or meld, grammatical notations into normal words. So to convey the past tense, in most cases, English speakers add the suffix -ed to the verb. To indicate that the subjects or objects being talked about have more than one items, they add -s or -es after the noun.
On the other hand, many linguists consider Vietnamese to be very analytical. That means that Vietnamese words never change their form but in order to acquire new grammatical meaning, we add new words beside the original word. For example, to mean that the action happened in the past, Vietnamese add the word đã before the verb.
The Vietnamese method has the advantage of being much more regular and easier to learn. That’s why I thought if we can somehow alter the grammatical rules of English to be more like Vietnamese, international communication would be much more efficient. So here is a list of common English grammar points adjusted to be more Vietnamese-like, in no particular order:
No countability. Therefore, we can ditch much for many; fewer for less; people for person.
one car, two car, three car
many water
less person
Just write the normal noun, prefixed by nhung (những). Use many if you want to emphasize large numbers.
I love nhung beautiful day when I be a child.
I have many car.
No discrimination between I, you, he, she, it, they, we.
I run, he run, she run, they run, we run.
I be, he be, she be.
Pronouns stay the same despite whether they are subject or object.
Mom did give that present to I.