10 Crazy things about the English Language

10 Crazy things about the English Language
10 Crazy things about the English Language

10 Crazy things about the English Language

While procrastinating the other day I came across a brilliant Guardian article about immigration, cultural assimilation, and learning English. It began by challenging the classic adage: “If you come to this country, you have to learn English”, a sentiment echoed throughout generations and across borders of various English speaking countries, generally to the sound of murmured approval. And in doing so it raised a number of important questions about the practicalities of thoroughly, or at least functionally, learning the language.

 

English is widely regarded as being quite an easy language to learn

, and it is in many ways. Its grammar system is very simple – almost every verb has only three forms; four if you count adding an “s” to the end of third persons (“he”, “she”, “it”) and it doesn’t assign gender or demand word agreement. It’s also universal, the lingua franca, the go-to language should people from France, Mexico, China, and Italy, for example, come together and have to find a common tongue.

 

Difficult to learn? Probably not, especially given the amount of resources (literature, music, film etc.) out there. Difficult to master? Absolutely. Precisely because of the depth and breadth of the English language, it’s a limitless void or cultural and national differences articulated through a bastard mix of Germanic, Anglo-Frisian, French, and Latin amongst others. And it’s also a language many of us speak but with which most of us are surprisingly unfamiliar.

 

I don’t think I’m overgeneralizing when I say that, for most of us, we don’t learn about our own language until we start learning another. For me, it was learning Italian that opened my eyes to the ridiculousness of English, and it was while subsequently training for a language teaching qualification that my knowledge of its madness became solidified. Here are 10 examples of English at its most barmy and brilliant.

10It has no future.

English has the opposite of this

9You can’t always count on it.

Don’t bother counting

8Our order of adjectives is one big ridiculous age-old mess.

Adjectives should be easy!

7We have to put up with phrasal verbs.

Phrasal verbs? Ugh!

6We have a tense that’s neither past nor present yet claims to be “perfect”.

No such thing as perfect in the English language

5Even our simple tenses are far from simple.

Simple verbs: a misnomer for sho

4The idioms are just the icing on the cake.

Idioms? Gimme a break!

3Some of our verbs are an absolute state.

Ack! Can’t handle English’s insanity

2We have to make do with “do”.

First thing on my to do list: get rid of “Do”

1Pronunciation

English is a real tongue twister