Our wonderful, wacky English language

[sl8]

I thought that this was pretty interesting, but I I'm well not very well versed in linguistics. Would be interested in opinions. Thank you.

https://www.thesunchronicle.com/opinion/columns/guest-column-our-wonderful-wacky-english-language/article_b1e0d0d6-50e3-5111-a396-8fb24e9c40b8.html

GUEST COLUMN: Our wonderful, wacky English language
BY IRWIN KRAUS Apr 21, 2011

English has become the common language of international commerce and discourse. That is so because it is wonderfully expressive and wonderfully compact in that expression. How did that come to be?

Several years ago I traveled frequently to Europe for work (poor me). One of the things I noticed in my travels was multilingual signs. On a store security sign photographed in the Netherlands, the same message in English takes 17 percent, 34 percent, and 46 percent more characters to represent in German, French, and Dutch respectively. The same is true when English is compared to Spanish and Italian. That is not uncommon, and it is not an accident.

While German and French and Dutch are relatively pure, English is promiscuous and highly mongrelized. English has freely borrowed words from many different languages (balcony, Italian balcone; absurdity, French absurdite; alligator, Spanish el lagarto). We borrow words enthusiastically and unabashedly. As a result, the English vocabulary contains about twice as many words as Spanish, for example. From this large vocabulary, we can most often express an idea in fewer words than any other language.

This is a mixed blessing. While English expression is more compact, Spanish is much more consistent and easier to learn. But for non-native adult speakers, English can be a nightmare to master.

[..]

[wryter2000]

1. I don't know how anyone manages to learn English

A German lady I knew who spoke perfect English pronounced catastrophe as cat-a-STROPH. Perfectly logical.

[sl8]

7. Yes, I've heard similar accounts.Thank you.

[SergeStorms]

2. This can be positively proved...

by listening to Donald Trump talk, and even more so by attempting to read anything he's ever written.

[sl8]

5. LOL. nt

[wryter2000]

13. He wrote something?

Next, you'll tell me Herschel Walker writes poetry.

[SergeStorms]

18. Well.....

if you count "tweets" or "truths" writing.

I should have been more precise with that statement. Mea Culpa.

[Martin68]

3. I taught English in Japan for 21 years. English spelling and grammar are an insane mix of Latin,

German, and French. As a result, English has an enormous vocabulary - Latin, German and maybe 2 three other language equivalents for many words. But I've heard from Hungarians and other Eastern Europeans, who speak 2 or 3 languages at least, that English is easy compared to Russian.

[sl8]

4. Very interesting, thanks. nt

Last edited Tue Nov 8, 2022, 01:39 PM - Edit history (1)

[wryter2000]

14. I can tell you Russian is a massive headache to learn

After almost a year at Cat, I could barely say good morning.

[SergeStorms]

19. An entirely different alphabet....

is only the beginning of the hurdles.

[Martin68]

34. Well, Chinese and Japanese not only have a different alphabet, but nonphonetic writing system.

[Dysfunctional]

29. I found Russian fairly ease to learn,

it only took 6 hours a day, 5 days a week, and 47 weeks. Actually, It is easier than English. One English sentence, "Why did the trashmen refuse to pick up my refuse?".

[Martin68]

35. Not to mention you could just as well spell the word "fish" as "ghoti." Bertrand russell pointed

that one out.

[Karadeniz]

6. The article is right !!!

[sl8]

8. Well, that'll do'er!. nt

[phoenix75]

9. I am presently studying Spanish

and totally agree that it is much more user friendly than English. For me it has a symmetry and uniformity lacking in English.
Thank you for your post.

[Skittles]

11. same

taking Duolingo lessons

[phoenix75]

15. Hey Skittles

Thank you for your post. I am now using the Wlingua app and also a miniseries called "Spanish with Paul" on YouTube. I have found both to be extremely helpful.
Best wishes!

[Skittles]

16. gracias por las sugerencias!

[phoenix75]

17. de nada y buena suerte!

[sl8]

25. And thank you for you response & sharing your experience. nt

[Skittles]

10. it astounds me that so many people learn English and speak it very well

it's so illogical at times.....we will crib from ANYONE!

[sl8]

23. I agree, and I'm a native speaker. :) nt

[wryter2000]

12. My opinion

From the very beginning, English was a hybrid language. A combination of Latin languages and German. It's been said it was created by Roman soldiers who wanted to get laid during their occupation of Britain way back when. I'm sure it was created in occupied Britain then when the natives spoke a German language.

We have several words that have both a Latin root and a German root. Think of "sweat" and "perspire." Often, the Latin word is more high-fallutin, for lack of a better word, and the German word is coarser. So from the get go, we had more words than other languages.

I adore English, and I feel fortunate to have learned it as my native language. I have studied Spanish and German, both of which have some similarities to English. I tried learning Russian, and...oy!

[wnylib]

22. English began in Britain after

the Roman occupation. When the Romans left, the Anglo-Saxons invaded, bringing their languages with them. Danes, Norwegians, and the French followed, adding their contributions to "Angloish" or English.

The British Empire brought other words into the language from conquered countries, plus through trade around the world.

Some English words even have remnants of Celtic languages.

There are several you tube videos on the history of English.

[wryter2000]

31. I stand corrected

I find this stuff fascinating. We're so obviously close to romance languages and German, I thought the Roman soldiers getting laid was a plausible explanation.

[wnylib]

36. Yes, it is fascinating. There is one series

on you tube that I looked for to link in my post, but couldn't find it again. It covers a different influence on English in each segment. I came across another one that was both accurate and humorous but the url was too long to work when I tried to link it.

Naturally I did not take your Roman soldier suggestion literally. Just wanted to point out the sequence since a lot of people think that Latin came into English through the Roman occupation, which couldn't have happened since English did not yet exist then.

Because of the Latin derived words in English, people think that it is a Latin based language like Italian or Spanish. But, the Latin based words come from the Medieval church and especially from Fench following the Norman invasion.

English is a Germanic language in origin and base words from the Angles and Saxons. Its grammatical structure is influenced by the Nordic (Scandinavian) Germanic of the Vikings.

[Mr.Mystery]

38. Actually, you're both right.

English wasn't influenced too much by Roman speakers of Latin, although there was contact with the Angle and Saxon tribes pre-invasion of England.

But English was very much influenced by Christian missionaries speaking Latin in the late 6th Century. See angel, minster (i.e., Westminster), monk, heresy, martyr, hermit.

[wryter2000]

39. Thank you!

There are so many really smart people on DU.

[sl8]

24. I've heard similar about dual Anglo & Norman vocabularies, after the Conquest. nt

Last edited Tue Nov 8, 2022, 02:43 PM - Edit history (1)

[wryter2000]

32. Remember the joke about Bush II?

I don't think he actually said this but rather it was a joke of something he would say.

"There is no French word for entrepreneur."

[3catwoman3]

20. I want to get one of the mugs that has this printed on it -

I before E
Except after C
and also when you
heinously seize
your weird foreign
neighbor's feisty
beige heifer

[sl8]

26. I *like* it! Thanks. nt

[twodogsbarking]

21. A smile is the same in every language.

So is that one special finger.

[sl8]

27. LOL. Thanks for that. nt

[sl8]

28. Thanks, everyone. :) nt

[IbogaProject]

30. Middle English dates to the 11th century

1050-1500 AD about. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_English
A fact about the Normans they were Nordic who took over eastern France and adopted French language. They also conquered Ireland and promptly adopted Celtic customs there.
Modern English basically started after Henry Viii, Elizabeth I, the printing press and especially Shakespeare. He added over 500 words to English. Chaucer was only 120 years before WS and his writing is the last stage of Middle English. I think Chaucer being the import customs official met many forreigeners and his writing was a step towards modern English. The printing press really staryted language changing slower. We may now be at the start of another shift with messaging and social media starting a new wave. It can be a trip to read youth text or chat messages, lots of abbreviations and gamer terms.

[Behind the Aegis]

33. Think of English as a sponge.

From its early beginnings it was very much other languages, somewhat uniform. However, constant invasions ended up with English morphing into two "dialects". The upper crust/royals mainly didn't speak English as it was a "commoner" language, instead, they spoke French. There was also a huge flux of Latin because of religion. Eventually, the dialects merged, and English started to come into being. England was such a world explorer/colonizer, that when they came into contact with other cultures, they adopted many words and phrases, then other languages adopted the "new" version from us. Most languages borrow from one another, but in the case of English, about half our vocabulary is made up of a mish-mash of a variety of languages. Yiddish is similar in some respects in that it sprang from German, but relied on several other languages, Hebrew being one.

As for spelling, well, new words, the Great Vowel Shift, and the rise of dictionaries has led to many words being spelled in all sorts of ways. This can be confusing, but, then again, as someone who can communicate in French (and about 9 other languages), spelling in English is a breeze. French has a HUGE variety of words that are spelled differently but pronounced the same, and this can lead to some really embarrassing situations.

[Mr.Mystery]

37. Interesting . . . but not entirely sound linguistically . . .

No language is more complicated or sophisticated than any other language.

Spanish is not "easier" to learn than English. Consider this:
I talk / you talk / he, she, it talks / we talk / you all talk / they talk. Notice the complete LACK of hard-to-learn endings?

Now look at Spanish. Yo hablo / (You informal) Tu hablas / El, ella, lo, (You formal) usted habla / nos hablamos / (You all informal) Vosotros hablais / Ellos hablan.

Notice all those damn endings? Yeah. But it doesn't stop there . . . those are the "regular" verbs that actually follow a pattern, not the irregular verbs that do whatever the hell they want to do.

And don't forget that Spanish has got special endings for the progressive tense "is going" or "are running," for the perfect tense "has gone" "have run," for the subjunctive mood "if I had gone" or "had I run."

And you know what else, Spanish has "grammatical gender," meaning that a table mesa for some bizarre reason is feminine and ends in an A, while book is libro is masculine and therefore must end in an O along with any word which modifies it--so tall table is mesa alta but tall book is libro alto.


It's true that English has a bigger vocabulary than other languages, but in ordinary daily speech, every language speaker in every language uses about the same number of words. So, that doesn't mean English is harder to learn than other languages.

Also, we English speakers have all those words because we borrowed so many words from other languages -- so if you're a French speaker, you have no problem with words like "honesty" or "school" because they obviously are cognate to honnêteté or ecole . . . same with Spanish: breeze, fresh, ranch, rodeo.