Reform the English language

[Djeuve]

Ok, I rarely debate, since I usually try to listen to both sides and see their points...I have a hard time having a strong opinion on something.

But here's something that's more in my field.

It's time to reform the English language! More specifically, the written form of English. Non-native speakers have difficulties mastering it, and heck, even NATIVE speakers have a difficult time with spelling because a lot of words don't sound the same as they are written.

Examples? Here's a few.

Why do we say: the wind oustide
But with the same spelling, say: we wind the mechanical toy

Why doesn't 'farce' rhyme with 'scarce'? They have the same suffix spelling.

Or the same sound but spelled differently: like the sound in "foot" and "put", but compare it to 'oo' in "loot" and 'uh' in "but".

Foot - Loot / Put - But

And here's a good one... these all end the same but NONE sound the same!
cough, enough, plough, though, through

A group of Americans, some time in the past, tried to simplify spelling but were ignored and ridiculed (I can't remember exactly who and what date, but I can look it up. It was after the war of Independance, I believe. Don't quote me on it, though. If you're unsure, search yourself or ask me to do it.) Some of the suggestions, among others, were changing "s" with a 'z' pronounciation to be written as "z". Ok, some of that did go through, obviously (as in the case of a lot of suffix -ise/-ize words: apologise -> apologize), but there is still a big gap left (nose, wise, disguise, disaster, etc.)

I applaud those people for trying, but maybe back then was not the time. Now, English is becoming more and more a global language, and it is to the language's advantage to simplify it to facilitate learning and communication between all of its speakers, native or non-native.

Plus, it might calm those people down who get annoyed at people who can't seem to speak the language correctly. It would not completely fix the problem, but it would help. A lot. I get tired of hearing "LEARN ENGLISH" from people who never really tried to learn another language. And I mean REALLY learn. (Not targetting anyone on the site; I just speak of past experiences with people who don't consider other people's situation.)

I've tutored and had tandems with people in several languages, and so I know the frustration that comes with learning.

For example, try really hard to put yourself in this situation: you are teaching English to someone who has had NO contact with English and is JUST starting. How can you truly explain why "food" and "blood" don't sound the same. And believe me, saying "that's just the way it is" does not help.

(Oh crap...I started a debate....*braces himself*)

I didn't bring up all my points yet either. I want to hear from you guys.

:bunny:

[Firefly557]

hmm i hate those people, it makes me feel embarrased to be english, you know? with those people that yell at bad english speakers IN THE SPEAKER'S OWN COUNTRY!!! they should at least make an effort.

Some how djeuve i dont see the changing English to sound like its spelt will catch on in England...not with older people anyway they like the confusing-ness and want it to stay that way. they dont even like the Z's instead of S's in words like uh.. photosynthisise (that was a stupid word...i cant spell it lol..stupid science classes) but i do how often do you get to use a Z anyhow?

[Djeuve]

I just mean it in the way that English should have ORDERLY pronounciation. I mean, there is no form dictating when an "s" has a 'ss' sound or 'z' sound. They could stay with the "s" if they prefer, but at least have firm grammatical rules which explains WHEN an "s" has the 'z' sound.

For example, (hypothetically) "s" would have the 'z' sound when it is followed by an "e", otherwise "z" will be written. Or, like in German, 's' sound is represented by a double "s", and a single "s" always has a 'z' sound...

I'm not saying to take my examples either, just make English ORDERLY. It's all over the place...

[Firefly557]

but thats the fun-ness of english lol i mean german has its odd grammar and french has....well i'm not quite sure what french has.....

But you do have a point english is rather all over the place in the written to the pronouncation

[Rascal]

*disclaimer* this is not going to be filled with lots of evidence :) ...i have 1 linguistics class and experience to back me up, writing off the top of my head here

i don't see the need to have languages, any language, spelled out phonetically, and that seems to be where you are going with your argument, correct me if i'm wrong. i liken this to 2 things, they may be similar, i haven't really thought it out, we'll all find out when i'm done writing lol.

the first is creating artificial languages. this was tried in europe with esperanto and another one that i fail to remember the name of. there were no exceptions in this language to any of the rules. it failed terribly. nobody wanted to lose their mother tongue, and they were right to not want to. language is a cultural thing. if everyone starts to speak the same language cultures will mesh and uniqueness disappears. the differences in the way that most words are pronounced and spelt in english harkens back to the roots of the words. english is the mutt of languages taking from anything and everything, borrowing from everywhere and assimilating words left, right and centre. if you want to streamline the spelling of words you are eliminating the history of the word. take for example doughnut. yes, that is the "proper" spelling, it indicates that a doughnut was made from dough. in recent times the spelling has shifted to donut, losing the "ugh" and losing the reference to dough (yes, we all know a donut is made with dough, but the spelling made it clear). and actually right there we have a similarity in pronunciation but difference in spelling with "dough" and "doe", these 2 words would be written similarly, but how do we know the difference? we would have to rely on context. speech generally relies on context more than writing (i think), this seems that it would only place undue burden on written language, meaning that now you would have to understand the context of a word and not just recognize it's spelling.

to take this to the extreme, there is a (well several, one could be chosen) phonetic alphabet out there if you really want, we could eliminate all variance in the written forms of languages and everybody could switch over to that. it would make the world a lot more simple, everybody could pronounce everybody else's words (making sense of them would be something else entirely, but someone that knows english for instance would be able to read arabic script, as it stands right now arabic looks like a bunch of squiggly lines to me).

there is also the fact that every language suffers from a similar problem. in french you don't say half of the letters in most words. words run into one another, to someone that doesn't know the language, if they hear someone speak french an entire sentence sounds like one word. should french then change it's spellings to suit it's pronunciations? same with italian...and spanish. the list goes on and on. written and spoken language serve different purposes. yes they are both communication, but written language has to be clear. with spoken language you have the person there to ask questions of to clarify any ambiguities.

i'd have to say that i respectfully disagree with changing the spellings of words. it would also take several generations to make this change as you would have to start by educating very young children to spell differently than their parents and grandparents. there is natural resistance to this type of change, but in this case i think it is justified. it keeps cultures intact and unique. it's terrible to say but it also plays to the class divide. this might be the only benefit i can see. in GENERAL, the wealthy spell better than the poor because they have the benefit of more education, this would eliminate that distinction.

this may have been sort of haphazard, but i think i got some of what i wanted across.

[Rascal]

I just mean it in the way that English should have ORDERLY pronounciation. I mean, there is no form dictating when an "s" has a 'ss' sound or 'z' sound. They could stay with the "s" if they prefer, but at least have firm grammatical rules which explains WHEN an "s" has the 'z' sound.

when i get home from work i am getting my linguistics text, there are rules for pronunciation.

[Nightwolf04]

so absically theres no point in bashing this because

1. people want to keep their mother tongue

2. languages would lose their uniques and so would cultures

3. the older generation for exmaple wouldn't use it

pffft good enough reasons for me but I see ur point

[Firefly557]

you could have a simpler written language for foreign english learner that could be kinda like japanese romanji that would have very clear pronounciation rules that apply to all words in the same way... but that would probably be too confusing...

[Nightwolf04]

yes probably as even the simpliest japanese is infact hard to learn...well at least i think so

[Djeuve]

I'm not touching spoken English. Just written. People speak with too many different accents to change spelling solely on how people pronounce it.

And it's not so terrible to change a word's spelling. That's something that happens naturally with time. Compared Shakespeare's English with what is spoken today for a concrete example.

I'm saying the language should at least be better structured. No, we don't have to change everything, nor do it all at once, but at least WORK towards some structure. Yes, there is a broad base of speakers and it would take some time, but it's possible. Germans did it around 5 years ago and already the changes are, for the most part, in full swing (there are always some people who dislike change). For a population of over 80 million people, that's pretty fast (and that's just counting people IN Germany. There is still Austria and Switzerland, among the borders of countries around Germany, plus German speakers in other countries.)

Sorry for constantly taking German as a comparisson, but it's the one I'm most familiar with reguarding this point.

And yes, French could use some reform for itself, but that's not really what I want to discuss here. But, for argument's sake, at least French spelling is structured in a way that (once knowing French pronounciation), when you see a text, you can read it and pronounce it how it is actually spoken, even if you haven't heard the word. Same for German, Chinese, Sanskrit and Japanese (probably other languages too, though I haven't learned them). As long as you know the alphabet (or characters) in these languages, you can at least pronounce everything correctly. (And I don't take into account people who simply have bad accents; that's an individual issue.)

And yes there are exceptions to most rules, but, at least there ARE firm rules, to which you can learn of the exceptions later on.

In English, which is a beautiful thing, you have so many different sounds for the vowels. An "a" sounds so different depending on the word: ape, apple, tall. So does "e", "i" and so forth. But if you could add an umlaut, or an accent to the vowel to make it clearer, it would be a big help right there. If anything, wouldn't English look at least cooler with accents? (å, ü, ó, ê ) :p

And please don't think I mean to change the language completely. It would be a hard task for everyone to adjust. But at least working towards some reform would be a big help.

Don't forget that English is NOT an easy language to learn. Some people expect it to be easy because they already know it, or see a lot of foreigners who are good at it. Well, it's easy enough to get the flow of English when it's so widespread in pop culture and the media, all around the world. If it weren't for that, there would be a lot less people speaking English. Don't believe me? Consider how few people know at least a few sentenses (not just single words) in Chinese or Russian. There are plenty of people speaking it in their own country, but why not elsewhere? They are hard languages? No! They have their own difficulties, BUT so does English! If all of a sudden a lot of Chinese and Russian songs and tv shows became globaly popular, you'd have exposure to the language and have a much easier time picking it up.

(Chinese actually has the simplest grammar I have ever seen.)

Anyway... did I say what I wanted to? Regardless, it's long enough for the moment, eh?

:bunny:

[monsieurjohn]

i'd be all for changing it, but i think just become it's become so globalized and ingrained into digital and nondigital society it would be nearly impossible. fifty years ago it might have still been feasible

[Djeuve]

It's never too late; the only real problem is getting people to get together, sit down, and reform the language, THEN getting the majority of speakers to accept the reform.

And realistically, I can't see that happening....not anytime soon anyway.

I am still for reforming the language, though. The romans did it around the height of their empire with Latin (ok, the Roman Epire population was somewhere between 65 to 120 million people, but for the time, it was quite a feat to get a reform to spread in such a wide territory.)

Before the 3rd century AD Classical Latin went through a number of changes. Inflections were simplified, word order was regularized, the earlier system of vowel length was changed, sound of consonants was modified, future and imperfect tenses were modified and syntax too was stabilized. In this way the morphology of Classical Latin was improved and standardized to a greater extent, making it use nominal inflections and a distinctive use of conjunctions.

And those were fairly major changes...

And as I mentionned before, for English, if the changes were gradually integrated, it would not be that hard.

Yet another problem would be to decide where to start... I think vowels would be appropriate, but that's me.

Thank goodness I'm not an English major ;)

:bunny:

[Sicander]

I am currently working on a sci fi book were I adressed the problem with english becoming universal. What I did was I combined The two most widely spoken languages in the world, English and French. It turned out rather well. Were things get complicated with English french takes over. It was the result of 300 years of the two languages mingleing, spanish was also splashed in because of the pervasiveness of it in america already. What you get is one of the weirdest sounding languages ever but it works alot cleaner. Basically you take french syntax and masculine feminine words and combine it with english words and spanish pronouciaction. funky huh.

[monsieurjohn]

esperanto!

[Rascal]

sigh...i tried to write this once and the text disappeared, so going thru again i might not be as thorough as i was before.

anyway, i got my text but i'm lazy and can't find what i wanted to, but i did find something else. bear with me here, sound the words out loud to see what i mean.

i read something interesting, the major reason to keep spelling apart from pronounciation is because of dialects. for most any word, it is pronounced differently in different parts of the world, despite it still being the same word. take for example the word neither. we all know this word. for our american friends it is pronounced kneether or sometimes kneethuh (in boston for example, they drop their r's). for our british friends, the probably say neyether. us canadians say both kneether and neyether (i say both). most irish would say it as nayther. so we have one word and 4 pronounciations (possibly, probably more). what is the solution to that? an irish person may not understand a bostonian's words, but if they were to write them down both parties would understand. if we base spelling on pronounciation then we lose dialects and everyone speaks the same. unless you mean to have different spellings per dialect, and then nobody would understand anybody.

[Damm]

I agree with Rascal there. I mean, yes English has it's problems - 14 verb conjugations being a personal favorite. But there isn't much you can do with spelling AND keep the integrity of the dialects. In my opinion, as soon as the french decide to drop the last consonants of every single word in the language, then we can talk.

But then again, I'm one of the "those people" who detest the spelling reforms done to the German language...so, you know where my opinions are coming from.

I think you should keep the written seperate from the speaking. If you want loot to sound like foot while you read, then go write ahead...just as long as you don't need to read outloud.

I should note though, that I do have personally memory of how frickin' hard it is to learn how to pronounce thing...I didn't learn to read until rather late in childhood, so I have clear memories of being completely illiterate. I think there are stumbling blocks in learning any language, but sooner or later words just turn into symbols and when you read you don't even really think of how the words are pronounced you just see the meaning behind them.

But hey, it's 2:30am...I might be rambling incoherently at this point.

[Djeuve]

Hmm... Darn, good point, Rascal. Even if we DID pick a dialect as the standard for written pronounciation, other dialects would have a hard time to adjust to different writting, as it's not how they pronounce it...

Ok, maybe I've been around non-native speakers for too long (myself included).

But still for certain words, like foot and loot again, they're said differently in other dialects anyway. No one says "f - oo - t", and no one says "l - uh - t". Change the vowals so they at least can be distinguished from one another, and none of the dialects lose their way of speaking. It's still the same word for everyone, and shared spelling, but their own dialect pronounces it differently. No harm done.

And as I said before, I DON'T want to change the spoken language. I LOVE accent, and think it's part of a language's charm. Only, a regulated written form would be beneficial. As the spoken part evolves, so should the spelling. I believe English is a bit behind on this.

But then again, few of the native speakers would be for this... I guess it would be a question of how nice you want to be to future learners.

It would help in school, too, with spelling problems. Like, an example I see time and again: lose and loose. Even I have to look twice sometimes to make sure I'm reading/writting it correctly. :p

:bunny:

[Rascal]

just for you djeuve...or anyone i suppose lol. a poem to drive you insane :)
http://pauillac.inria.fr/~xleroy/stuff/english-pronunciation.html

back to the point at hand, and after reading that beast, i think i might try to work in some of my psycholinguistics background here too. lets see if university payed off lol.

i think i see what you are saying, you want to clarify the spellings right? but you are still basing that off of pronunciations, which means that there has to be one pronunciation that is deemed "correct", and all others are therefore "wrong". i can't think off the top of my head any dialect that pronounce foot and loot differently than canadian (or i suppose american too), but i am 99% sure that there is one. most of the consonants in english are pronounced the same from dialect to dialect, the problem falls as you have noticed in the vowels (i think that's mostly true). to really get a feel for how vowels are pronounced (ie. if the tongue is against the roof of the mouth or the bottom, curled to the back or pushed to the teeth, if the lips are apart or together and more, the process of actual getting a sound out of your mouth is very involved) you need to start getting into phonetics, and phonemes (the smallest parts of speech, the sounds represented by the letters) and morphemes and linguistics, and all of that i'm not too up on at the moment. but suffice to say that there are USUALLY reasons for how things are pronounced (your example of the 'ss' sound versus the 'z' sound) and it probably has to do with the sounds around it and what is most economical for the changing of the shape of your mouth to produce the next sound in the word. phew...that prolly just like exploded your mind lol.

now, having said that the dialect that you speak is ingrained in you from birth (assuming you have parents and family around that will speak it to you, and of course friends later on). by age 7 or 10 or so we have learned the grammar of our mother tongue. you may not realize it, you might not be able to spout off all the rules or know what a split infinitive is, but shown a sentence you will likely know if it is grammatical or not. i'm going to generalize this down to words now. i'm not sure of any studies that can back me up, but from what i've seen and read this seems like something very likely (hmm...maybe i shoulda gone with psyc...oh well lol). at the same time we are learning grammar we are learning how to say the words that we encounter. given a new word like wug (a common word in psyc for doing tests like this), the vast majority of speakers of a dialect would pronounce that word the exact same, they have a built in rule in their brains that says "if i see a new word, w is pronounced 'w', the u looks like it would be 'uh' and g is 'g'...giving me a sound of "wuhg"." (canadian pronunciations here :P). in a different dialect that 'u', because of it's location in the word, might be pronounced differently than i just described. so we come to the same problem again.

it might be nice to have standardized spelling, but i think that invariably it would reflect back onto spoken language. written and spoken language are connected, it is just the way of things. in one part of the world a person sees the word "about" and pronounces it "a-bow-t" (as in bow like take a bow, not the one you shoot), and some others will say it as "a-boo-t" (or so i understand that's what it's like in eastern canada). same with house..."how-ss" and "who-ss". in my mind, with a reform to spelling, even just with accents, something has to be decided as being "correct", and in time dialects would fade, we could communicate easier for sure but individuality would be gone (and so would accents!!! i love accents :P).

[Djeuve]

Oh, I doubt accents would fade. A lot of people in my town, for example, speak French. Not the French you learn in school, but a very specific North Western New Brunswick dialect.

We all pretty much know the correct spelling, and can use that to speak standardized French, but we STILL speak our dialect. Even when we write to each other, we write our words like we would have said it.

For example:
(I am here)
Standard French: Je suis ici.
My dialect: Chu t'icitte.

Now doesn't that look different? Sure we say it much differently, but, we DO have the standardized language for formal things and to communicate with speakers of different dialects to understand each other... sort of like a second language.

English could standardize too, for formal and learning purposes, without losing the spoken charm of the dialects. People could still write as they say it amongst themselves...

Like writting " Ah wuz heer"... or "Oi wawz heea".

So I sincerely doubt any accents would dissapear...unless English reformers and supporters thereof start going Nazi with the language like some of the more extreme Parisians did with French...

I really loved that poem you sent, by the way! I know it's part of the language to have its complications... and is a good thing in a way. The way I am taking this is from the viewpoint of a foreigner learning it, though. I'm not saying that the language should be completely changed, just made so reading it would be easier, without having to ask about or look up every word to make sure of pronounciation.

° David Crystal quotes the figure that English is about 75% regular. The 400 or so irregular spellings are "among the most frequently used".
° Other writers have claimed that 3% of the existing language is so unpredictable that it has to be learned but that 3% comprises "a very large proportion" of our everyday usage.

So, it would not be that huge of a change, either, considering we'd keep exceptions to some words, like "neither", which, as you mentioned, highly depends on dialect.

:bunny:

[Rascal]

i must confess that i don't think i've ever heard of people writing english in their own dialects regularly (or french or other languages for that matter, but obviously you have shown that some people do). i've definately never heard of people writing phonetically (except the hukt on fonics kids...they lose so hard). the only only time that i ever see either is in instant messaging, or in books where an author is trying to convey an accent. in both cases it is used for effect to mark a colloquial phrase or to determine where someone grew up. maybe i am just missing how much you want to change in a "basic" form of english. to use french as an example, accented letters never meant anything to me except for the one that softens the c (ie. in garcon), the rest just complicated spelling by forcing me to remember which words had accents on their e's.

So, it would not be that huge of a change, either, considering we'd keep exceptions to some words, like "neither", which, as you mentioned, highly depends on dialect.


not to nit-pick...but if vowels are being simplified, how do you choose which pronunciation to keep for "neither"? you can't have it being spelled two (or more) different ways. see what i mean? if we are coming up with a simplified system for words to be read it means:
1. introducing more characters to the alphabet (accented or not, they might as well be new) and
2. there has to be a standard pronunciation, which there isn't one (i suppose british would be the "standard", but everybody that speaks a variation of english would argue that).

[Djeuve]

That's exactly why it would be an 'exception'. People would learn the most common pronounciations for it, depending on what English thay are learning, i.e. American or British, or any other dialect they happen to be learning. Exceptions like "neither" would not have a spelling change for that purpose.

There was a similar case in German with the word "sechs" (the number six). Some pronounced it like "zex", and others "zechs" (where 'ch' is a harsh sounding throat-hiss).

There are always some exceptions, there has to be. But exceptions are nicer when compared to a fixed rule which applies to most cases.

As for the alphabet, it remains the same, as in French. Accents are only indications of a variation on a vowel, they don't make a new stand-alone letter (at least, not in the languages I've learned so far). They won't make the alphabet longer, in other words.

As for writting in dialect, for English, I've only seen it online. Plus, usually these are written in the form of notes passed in class (ah, school :p , and having a French education, I can only speak for my own dialect. So I can't say it would be done, or that it should either. Only that it would be possible to do in order to keep's ones own pronounciation in written form, while keeping a standard and formal written forms.

And finally, choosing a standard to base this all on. That's a real puzzle. We could just choose one and go ahead, but I don't think everyone would agree with that. Only plausible and fair way I can think of is collecting the words that are relatively the same in most dialects (for words like 'if'), or, as I mentionned before (but not clearly, since it's hard to explain) changing what is consistently parallel for each.

By this I mean, if American English pronounces "are" as 'arr' and British more of a prolonged 'ahh', then they would be spelled the same in the standardized form, but simply be pronounced differently depending on dialect.

Ok, maybe "are" is a bad example, because there is no real need to change that one. British already had the loose rule that R's placed at the end of a word simply prolongs the preceding vowel (like "car"), or morphs into an 'a' sound (like "beer").

But you know what I mean, right?

[Lil Bit]

I think there is a language that does this already. It's called ebonics.

[Djeuve]

But ebonics is more on the pronounciation side...

All I'm arguing for is spelling; I love accents and dialects and whatnot, and would not want to be like a Parisian Extremist for French...sigh... those people...

Ah well.

:bunny:

[Damm]

I always thought Ebonics was an attempt to make a language out of African-American slang.

[Rascal]

to my knowledge it is damm. they tried to formalize it, and write out all the rules and whatnot. essentially ebonics is a simplified form of english. not to say that it isn't at the same level as english, but the rules themselves are less complex, it is still a viable, full and beautiful dialect.

[Damm]

That reminds me of another reason why it would be hard to simplify English...there are just far too many REALLY WEIRD dialects. LIke the people of South Carolina, I was TOLD they were speaking english, but I couldn't understand ONE SINGLE WORD!

[ANGLOIRISH]

Try spending years in Pennsylvania then return to the Miramichi! I couldn't understand my own relatives! I had no idea that they had such heavy Irish accents.

[Damm]

I'm moving to Newfoundland in the fall, we'll see how I fair there! ;)

[ANGLOIRISH]

Right on!!! I have never met a Newfoundlander I didn't like! The people on the "Rock" are wonderful!!! Their accent is marvelous. Regardless of where you go, if you are from the Maritimes, you can pick out a Newfoundlander the moment he opens his mouth. Such lovely people. I am sure you will love it there. Although I am not a Newfoundlander, I was born in St. John's, Nfld. Left there when I was three months old but the love of the water and the sea is engrained in me. Best of luck!

[MrsD]

The same is true of my Irish family. Some I understand as clear as the day and others I need a translator for! Dialects are funny things...

[Djeuve]

Consider words like "cover".

Considering what cover means, the related word "discover" makes sense.

How do you explain the word "recover", though? The is nothing being covered up again, nor is anything happening with the opposite meaning to "discover"...

Any other words like this you'd like to share? I love looking at words like that :)

:bunny:

[Rascal]

cover...i dunno if that is the root word of discover and recover :P. if it was would it not be then dis-cover (as in to take the cover off) and re-cover (to put the cover back on...well i guess that is one of the meanings)? when you are breaking down words into their constituent morphemes (the smallest unit of meaning in a word, i hope lol...so an affix or a root word), you can't just assume that because one word contains the same string of letters that form a whole other word (like cover in discover) that it is the root, the origin could be coincidental and from somewhere completely different.

i wish, i wish i still had my linguistics notes because we talked about a lot of this kind of stuff. that class is in my top 5 of most fav classes in uni. i'll try to think of some fun words today :).

[Djeuve]

I know. It's still misleading because of their prefixes, though. Even though they might previously have been diferent root words before, they now match the spelling.

But dis-cover does makes sense, if you take in in the way that before it was found, it was unknown, and thus 'covered' by our ignorance (not ignorance in the negative sense, rather in the sense of not knowing).

I look forward to your examples :)

:bunny:

[Damm]

Well, as you know German is absolutely full of those prefix-verbs that don't make sense...but, in english, my favorite verb that doesn't make sense when you break it apart is "to understand"

How is standing under something mean that you know what is going on? Or, are you not quite standing, you are under-standing (as in underachieving - which makes perfect sense to me)...but then how does standing indicate that you fully comprehend the situation?

Anyway, that's my favorite one.

(For Djeuve - my favorite one in German is entschliessen...what the heck does ent mean? And do they consider decisions as "open"? until they are decided and then they are "closed?")

[Djeuve]

Well, "ent" is like the "de" or sort of like "un" prefixes.

For example, entdecken is discover, entfernen is remove...so it makes sence to have entschliessen for decide, for that "de"-type prefix... But yeah, otherwise, "ent" is not a widely used prefix.

[Damm]

Well yes, Djeuve...I know "ent" is just like "dis", "de", or "un"...it was more the "schliessen" part I was talking about.