About the project
What World English is
World English (WoE) is a deliberate revision of English that keeps what works and fixes what doesn’t — aiming for a variant that is regular, predictable, easier to learn, and still readable to anyone who knows English.
English is the default language of the internet, science, aviation, business, and travel. It is also, by accident of history rather than design, one of the harder languages to learn well: its spelling rarely predicts its sound, its verbs and plurals are riddled with memorized exceptions, and many of its “rules” are not rules at all but lists. In many respects World English is a subset of British and American English — it takes the common core and drops the irregular edges. In others it is a genuine reform, replacing rules that are broken beyond repair with something simpler.
Why it exists
A learner today must absorb thousands of irregular spellings, hundreds of irregular verbs, an oversized tense system, and a layer of near-arbitrary choices that native speakers themselves cannot explain. None of that complexity is necessary to communicate clearly — it is historical residue. World English asks, rigorously: how simple could English be while still being English? It is a research and design effort, not a campaign to make anyone switch.
Design principles
- Subtract before you add. The first tool is removing irregularity, not inventing new grammar. Most wins come from regularizing what already exists.
- Reform only where subtraction fails. Where a rule is irreparably arbitrary, replace it with a single predictable rule — even if that form isn’t standard English.
- Stay legible. Spelling is regularized only lightly. A page of World English should never look alien to an English reader.
- One rule, no exception lists. A feature is “done” only when it can be stated as a rule a beginner can apply, with no table of special cases.
- Document the why. Every divergence from standard English is recorded with the learner problem it solves and the trade-off it accepts.
How it is being designed
Each step produces documentation the next step builds on. Nothing is decided silently.
- Map standard English — document the actual rules as a baseline.
- Catalogue the difficulties — record what learners struggle with, and why.
- Design the fixes — for each difficulty, a regularized rule with examples and trade-offs.
- Specify the language — consolidate the rules into the specifications.
- Prove the rules hold together — dogfood them on real passages and check them mechanically.
- Build the tools — translators and pronunciation support.
What it is not
- Not a replacement for English in literature, law, or native everyday use.
- Not a “dumbed-down” English — it expresses the same ideas with less arbitrary machinery.
- Not a phonetic rewrite — spelling changes are conservative and recognizable.
- Not finished — the rules keep changing as they are worked out.