Today, systematically altering the English language seems impossible.
While in some regards, we see important work being done with regards to this (particularly regarding gender inclusivity and social justice), the idea of full-blown revisions to English seem daunting.
On the outset of the United States, though, standardizing American English was top-of-mind.
This is what led to famous dictionary-man Noah Webster publishing "An American Dictionary of the English Language” in 1828.
Ben Franklin, who was known for being a universal tinkerer, did some work on the language too, suggesting that we remove the letters C, J, Q, W, X, and Y. He suggested some replaces he invented.
John Adams, in 1780, wrote a letter to the President of Congress suggesting the creation of a national language academy for “refining, correcting, improving and ascertaining the English Language."
For Adams, America needed to perfect and advance the English language beyond what Britain had done with it.
I think there's a case to be made that Milton, Shakespeare and God's Secretaries (the translators of the King James Bible) are the truly successful language reformers.
Which is to say, poets are the great language reformers.
And it’s a very modern phenomenon, too.
In the Harlem Renaissance, poets like Langston Hughes redefined the African American vernacular.
And that’s just in English.
Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy helped establish the Tuscan dialect.
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz wrote in the indigenous Mexican language of Nahuatl, which contributed to the effort of preserving it, in addition to Spanish.
Scholars like Geoffrey Chaucer helped transition literature into the vernacular. This was the beginning of popular literature. It was an important step leading into the age of mass media post-Gutenberg, allowing for popular reading in Italian, French, and English.
Chaucer was a bridge between Old English and Modern English.
The culture of literary reference — being able to use or turn a phrase and have it recognized by most audiences — seems to be waning.
Adrienne Rich has delved into English, Spanish, and Hebrew in her work, reflecting a the plurality of languages in our modern world.
Most commonly, Shakespeare is thought to have coined 1,700 words. This, however, has been debated.
According to Historic UK, the translators of the King James Bible (no, Shakespeare wasn’t one of them) introduced 257 phrases to the English language.
Oxford English Dictionary credits John Milton with over 600 new words.
An interesting side note if you’re not familiar with Paradise Lost’s history — Milton composed the work through dictation, using amanuenses and friends.
“Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world,” Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote in his unfinished essay “A Defence of Poetry.”
Above all, poetry is where we take the mind where it could not have gone otherwise.
Both a map and a destination.
To close, here’s a wonderful bit of what I’m calling (and aspiring to) in “abstract word painting” from e.e. cummings:
Thy fingers make early flowers of
all things.
thy hair mostly the hours love:
a smoothness which
sings,saying
(though love be a day)
do not fear,we will go amaying.
thy whitest feet crisply are straying.
Always
thy moist eyes are at kisses playing,
whose strangeness much
says;singing
(though love be a day)
for which girl art thou flowers bringing?
To be thy lips is a sweet thing
and small.
Death,Thee i call rich beyond wishing
if this thou catch,
else missing.
(though love be a day
and life be nothing,it shall not stop kissing).