Back in Ancient Times (even before Elvis) computer people had to deal with the problem that printers did not distinguish between the digit zero and the letter “O”. So they designed printers that printed “Ø” (a circle with a slash through it) for zero. For many years after that students in technical fields wrote their zeros “Ø”. This became a mark of their subculture – they were conscious of doing it as a statement of their geekhood. (See note 1).

Some countries have tried to reform their languages. In 1951 the Norwegian powers that be tried to get people to say the equivalent of “forty two” instead of “two and forty”. This was desirable because it causes confusion when telephone numbers are pronounced. For example, “2317 3251” would be said as if it were “three and twenty seventeen two and thirty one and fifty”. As this article shows, fifty years later a sizeable minority of Norwegians were still saying it that way.

Both France and Germany tried some modest spelling reforms in the 1990’s. Both met with stiff opposition and have had only spotty success.

Perhaps the most annoying bug in English is the fact that “two”, “to” and “too” are pronounced identically. (See note 2) This could be repaired easily by having everyone use the Scottish form “twa” (the confusion in practice comes mostly between “two” and one of the others). But if a joint Anglo-American commission tried to introduce this all hell would break loose. A minority would probably start using it, but I predict many local American school systems would try to ban it.

Technical people have a different feeling about changing their language. Some technical fields have organizations that occasionally promulgate changes in terminology. This can be good. What is really really bad is the practice of some mathematicians to redefine commonly used terms at the beginning of a book rather than introducing new terms. This makes it difficult to dip into the middle of a book (what Steenrod called being a “grasshopper”) or to have conversations with people in different fields. I ran into this when I was a brand new professor in a department with topologists who talked about “free groups”, by which they meant free Abelian groups. That raised this abuse to my consciousness and I have noticed many examples since then. One of the most egregious was that Bourbaki tried to redefine “positive” to mean “nonnegative”. A few people still follow that usage, including, I am told, some French public schools.

Note 1 Someone please give me a good internet reference to marks of subculture – the wikipedia site is too narrow. See my comments on grits in the covert curriculum.

Note 2 Actually, “to” may be pronounced with a schwa when it is unemphasized. But it is emphasized when you read a highway sign that says “to 95”, which sounds like “295”.

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