The Zhonglish Manifesto: Why English needs reform, and the argument for a fairer global language.
English abbreviations are not shortcuts. They are cognitive landmines, social gatekeepers, and a regressive tax on non-native speakers. It is time to retire the ones that refuse to become words.
Your Language Is a CAPTCHA — The Cognitive Chaos of English Abbreviations Read More »
Grok. Claude. Lyft. Flickr. Every startup name is a gamble on whether anyone can read it. The problem is not the branding. The problem is English.
If You Have to Explain How to Pronounce Your Company Name, Your Language Has Failed Read More »
I dream of an English that plays fair. One where a seven-year-old reads as fluently as a Finnish child, where all verbs take -ed, and where every retired word gets a card in a library, not a deletion.
Two hundred English verbs refuse to follow the -ed rule. They encode no extra meaning. They follow no pattern. They exist because the sound changes that created them died a thousand years ago—and nobody swept up.
English-speaking children take two to three years longer to learn to read than children in Italy, Finland, or Spain. The difference is not the children. It is the language.
The Hidden Cost of English Spelling: Two Extra Years to Read a Stop Sign Read More »
Chinese children breeze through the multiplication table while English-speaking kids are still learning to spell numbers. The difference is not cultural. It is structural.
Eleven Broke English. Then It Broke Arithmetic. Read More »
The first letter of Django is silent. It has a lot in common with group project partners and empty closets.
The Silent D: Django and the Most Useless Letter in Cinema History Read More »
Chinglish happens when Chinese speakers fail at English. Zhonglish happens when they choose their own. One is an accident. The other is a voice. Welcome to the future of English.
Chinglish is Ugly. Zhonglish is the Future. Read More »
There is a version of English spoken in courtrooms, boardrooms, and academic journals. It is dense. It is expensive. And it is almost entirely unnecessary.
The Jargon Barrier — Words That Gatekeep Instead of Communicate Read More »
The Oxford English Dictionary contains over 600,000 words. The Second Edition runs to twenty volumes. It weighs over sixty kilograms in its printed form. This is often described with a certain pride—as if a language with more words is a richer language.
The Mountain of Words — Why the Oxford Dictionary Is Not a Treasure Read More »