A Completely Wackadoodle, Illogical Language

Written by Kevin (Torus Volunteer)

English has some unique features that have made it the lingua franca of the modern world. One is its extensive vocabulary, which is due to our tendency to just assimilate a foreign word into the lexicon rather than trying to translate it. We’re the Borg of languages. Another is its extensive use of turns of phrase, idioms, allusions, metaphors, analogies, and referential speech. Aside from slang, we have profession-specific speech (doctorspeak, lawyerspeak, academicspeak), activity-specific speech (sports talk, entertainment talk), and (ecch!) social media-speak (I hate myself every time I type “LOL,” lol). Those things alone make our language very challenging to learn.

In addition to those obstacles, we have rules that only apply most of the time, in grammar, syntax, and pronunciation. An ESL student will dutifully learn such a rule and then almost immediately encounter an example where it doesn’t apply. It’s like learning to drive in a country where you drive on the right side of the road 80% of the time and the left side 20% of the time, and there aren’t any signs to tell you which. And pronunciation rules? Ha! Just let the words tough, cough, through, dough, lough, and bough roll off your tongue. 

We also have phrases that have to be learned individually, because there are no hard and fast rules. For instance, there’s quite a difference between being on the road and in the road, and on your way and in your way. It’s just a matter of usage, which is never and has never been dictated by anyone—it just happens. Think of all the words that are synonyms for “fast”—swift, rapid, quick, brisk, speedy, high-speed. Who decided that a runner is swift, transit is rapid, oil changes are speedy, rail transport is high-speed, and the pace of work on the assembly line is brisk? No one—but if you refer to a rapid runner or a brisk train, you’ll get a funny look.

And then there’s the fact that we assign about twenty-eight meanings to some words. What’s the definition of “right”? Got half an hour? How about “back”? Or “down”? And oh, did I mention that a lot of those words function as nouns, verbs, and adjectives? Or that if you pair then with a preposition, they mean something different altogether? Right on! Chin up! There’s a reason why the Webster’s Dictionary of the English Language is the single best tool for squashing bugs.

These wackadoodle features are because our language is the bastard child of Old Norse, Anglo-Saxon, German, Norman, French, and Latin. Not only our vocabulary but our grammar and syntax contain features of all those languages. That’s why it’s so bloody illogical, and why it’s so hard to learn. One thing that surprised me when I learned other languages is how regular their rules are by comparison

So I really feel for people trying to learn the single most complex language in the world. One thing I need to constantly remind myself of is, if someone’s struggling with English, they’re not slow or stupid, any more than I was slow or stupid when I struggled to learn differential calculus (I got a B-minus). English can be effin’ brutal.