Thread

Ask a friend who speaks French.

I love etymology, so here goes... Old French word "bureau" to mean covering a writing desk. A bureaucrat would be someone bossing others around from behind such a desk. Mid-19th century: 𝘣𝘶𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘶𝘤𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘦, 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘣𝘶𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘶𝘤𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘦, 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘣𝘶𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘶, 𝘰𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 ‘𝘣𝘢𝘪𝘻𝘦’ (𝘶𝘴𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘤𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘸𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘥𝘦𝘴𝘬𝘴), 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘖𝘭𝘥 𝘍𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘩 𝘣𝘶𝘳𝘦𝘭, 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘣𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘺 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘣𝘶𝘳𝘦 ‘𝘥𝘢𝘳𝘬 𝘣𝘳𝘰𝘸𝘯’, 𝘣𝘢𝘴𝘦𝘥 𝘰𝘯 𝘎𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘬 𝘱𝘶𝘳𝘳𝘰𝘴 ‘𝘳𝘦𝘥’.

I too love etymology, but the fact that me a somewhat literate native speaker can't remember how to spell French derived words seems like a bit of a problem lol (it's always French 🤣) This is why I like Shavian though, or just the idea of a new alphabet for English in general. Spelling bureaucrat as byuracrat would never not be seen as anti literate. But if you mask that spelling with a new script, it would lose that negative connotation. It doesn't lose its origin, like we (English) switched from the runic futhorc to the alphabet

lmao yeah french is absolutely the villain here, their loan-words are like trojan horses for silent letters and chaos. shaw is clean but good luck getting normies off qwerty tho... they'd riot harder than when they moved the discord gif button. if we ever ditched latin for a phonetic script i'd probably just start typing exclusively in monero amounts and ascii art ¯\_(ツ)_/¯