The main reasons of written languages existing are...
1: ...So that people may express themselves. My opinion is that this is extremely important. This paragraph includes for example the making of lyrics and the comments on youtube.
2: ...Because people need to communicate with each other in a way that almost everyone may understand. This paragraph isn't used as much as you may believe. The reason I wrote "almost everyone may understand" and not just "everyone" is because it takes some time to understand the written language, you usually haven't learned it until you're about 7 years old.
3: ...Our hands and brain make us capable of communicating by writing/painting.
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The untruths of the statements posted in the above paragraphs are:
1: Sometimes, a certain comment/lyric hardly isn't expressive enough to be of importance. For example some comments on youtube; I qoute "This is idiot, no you idiot (excuseme my english)".
2: In my opinion the only language that more or less everyone CAN understand is math, which is because humans are born with logic, but there's nothing that we are born with that explain why a flower would be a "flower" and not a "horse" (or "flemch"). If any of you have remarks on my statement, please contact me (and I mean it, PLEASE DO!).
3: I believe it may also be our learned behavior that makes us communicate with writing and painting. What if no one would have ever told you to paint or write and no one in your surroundings ever painted or wrote. Do you think you would ever start to paint or write? I think it took ages for cavemen before anyone actually did paint something in the sand or however it started. But once someone did it, others started too. If every living man would have to learn from the basis without emulating others, we wouldn't have been where we are today. I know this sounds like a cliché, but I just emulate (do you get it? ^^).
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On to what I want said
In the end of this post I have a link. If you understand Swedish, you will probably laugh your head off. To be on the safe side to make you understand what it's about, I will explain the major problem we Swedes have concerning both our own language and English (and surely a couple of more, as well).
In Swedish we have something called "särskrivning", which would be something like "apart writning" in English. "Särskrivning" is a gramatical error. An example would be "brunbjörn", which is "brown bear" in English, the error of "särskrivning" would result in writing "brun björn", which then would make "brown bear" in English. HEY!!! There's no difference, right? In Swedish "brun björn" would mean a bear who is brown and "brunbjörn" would mean the species of brown bear. -Why is this a problem?, you might ask. I'll take a more serious example. The gas station Shell has had an ad, which said
"Mellan kl 12.00 - 16.00 kollar vi glykolhalten + spolar vatten och olja på din bil"
The correct would be "spolarvatten" instead of "spolar vatten". "Spolarvatten" means "windscreen washer fluid" and "spolar vatten" would mean something like "pour water".
"Mellan kl 12.00 - 16.00 kollar vi glykolhalten + spolar vatten och olja på din bil" = "Between 12 and 16 'o clock we check the glycol content + pour water and oil on your car"
"Mellan kl 12.00 - 16.00 kollar vi glykolhalten + spolarvatten och olja på din bil" = "Between 12 and 16 'o clock we check the glycol content + windscreen washer fluid and oil on your car"
A little difference, don't you think? There are even weirder combinations which can occur, as can be heard if following the link on the end of this post. But what is the reason we Swedes can't even write our own language anymore? The majority of the people in Sweden would agree that it's because the English gets more and more attention by us Swedes. A lot of the people born in Sweden around the 1920's don't even know English.
What can be done? If you have any ideas how to make no errors of "särskrivning" occur, tell them to me, because they would be revolutionary to us Swedes. The best idea I've got is to use hyphen ( - ) more regularly. For example "brunbjörn" could be spelled "brun-björn" so you would understand that the two words actually is a substantive and not an adjective and a substantive, because that is what the difference purely gramatically is. The reasons I have heard people telling me why they "write apart" is because it is easier to read "national ekonomi" than "nationalekonomi" (I hope you understand that "nationalekonomi" means "national economy"). I understand and accept their argument, but the current development on our language is just making misunderstandings a more regular phenomenon.
If you who read this isn't Swedish, don't ignore it because of that. Spread the word. Use hyphen ( - ) more yourself, just because you aren't Swedish doesn't mean you can't implement it into your language. Think about it! The reason we write is to become understood and there are more than two sides fighting this war. One side is those who think it is harder to read "nationalekonomi" than "national ekonomi". Another side is those who thinks that gramatically correct language is the ultimate language (the ones that thinks "nationalekonomi" is the only right way to spell it). Any questions? What!? Are you wondering which of those two sides I'm on? I told you there were MORE than two sides fighting this war. I'm on a third side, the one that thinks that grammar is very important, but that understanding each other without misunderstanding (duh!!!) is what is most important. Thank you for reading this much from my psycho brain. Here's the long awaited link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Cw8cKQ6SN0 (youtube) http://slayradio.org/mastering_swedish_lesson_2.php (download)
