English is an Atrocious Language!
Here at last, by popular demand.
Here at last, by popular demand.
English is an atrocious language. It's full of weird metaphors, incomprehensible technical jargon, and figures of speech that don't make much sense at all. Worst of all, spelling in this language is a nightmare.
Don't get me wrong. I'm an American, I've spoken English all my life, and it's delightfully suited to puns and other word plays (my favorite kind of humor). But when I went to college, two things happened that got me thinking about our mother tongue. First, I started reading Richard Lederer. Second, I was a multilingual communications major, which meant I was studying two foreign languages, Spanish and French in my case.
First and foremost: Why do we have so many names for roads? You have your streets, your avenues, your boulevards, lanes, drives, circles...and your roads! What a concept, roads that are just roads. Then you get outside the cities, and it becomes even more messed up. I can see highway--that's a road where you get to drive fast through a city. It might even take you all the way to another city, but you shouldn't get your hopes up; follow one long enough, and you get on the interstate. Ah, yes, the interstate. A long, long, LONG road that can take you all the way across the country. That's simple enough, but then you get into a major city, and you have a problem: it's not the interstate anymore. It's an expressway, or a parkway, or a highway (not the same as an in-town highway). Sometimes it turns into a whole other interstate without you leaving it! And, while we're on the subject, what's with driving on a parkway? With a name like that, shouldn't you be parking on it, instead of on the driveway, which, according to its own name, should be DRIVEN on!*
You see where this could be confusing to the innocent traveler.
Then there's our spelling. I'm fortunate in that I have the photographic memory: when I see a new word, all I have to do is look at it for a few seconds, and that word is there for life. I'm like my own dictionary. "How do you spell
'antidisestablishmentarianism'? Let me see...ah, there it is." Thousands upon thousands of words at my fingertips. There are, however, thousands upon thousands of people who just cannot master the fine art of spelling. I can understand why. See this:
Don't get me wrong. I'm an American, I've spoken English all my life, and it's delightfully suited to puns and other word plays (my favorite kind of humor). But when I went to college, two things happened that got me thinking about our mother tongue. First, I started reading Richard Lederer. Second, I was a multilingual communications major, which meant I was studying two foreign languages, Spanish and French in my case.First and foremost: Why do we have so many names for roads? You have your streets, your avenues, your boulevards, lanes, drives, circles...and your roads! What a concept, roads that are just roads. Then you get outside the cities, and it becomes even more messed up. I can see highway--that's a road where you get to drive fast through a city. It might even take you all the way to another city, but you shouldn't get your hopes up; follow one long enough, and you get on the interstate. Ah, yes, the interstate. A long, long, LONG road that can take you all the way across the country. That's simple enough, but then you get into a major city, and you have a problem: it's not the interstate anymore. It's an expressway, or a parkway, or a highway (not the same as an in-town highway). Sometimes it turns into a whole other interstate without you leaving it! And, while we're on the subject, what's with driving on a parkway? With a name like that, shouldn't you be parking on it, instead of on the driveway, which, according to its own name, should be DRIVEN on!*You see where this could be confusing to the innocent traveler.Then there's our spelling. I'm fortunate in that I have the photographic memory: when I see a new word, all I have to do is look at it for a few seconds, and that word is there for life. I'm like my own dictionary. "How do you spell 'antidisestablishmentarianism'? Let me see...ah, there it is." Thousands upon thousands of words at my fingertips. There are, however, thousands upon thousands of people who just cannot master the fine art of spelling. I can understand why. See this:
taught
Pretty straightforward, right? "I taught myself to ice skate." But what if you were hearing the word for the first time, and you tried to use phonics on it? "I...tot myself to ice skate"? No, no. Taught, not tot! And if you think that's bad:colonel
Oh, oh, oh...a borrowed word! Those are like Kryptonite for the spelling challenged. Now, there's no R, no stinking R, not a single R in the entire word, and look how it's pronounced! Kernel. It's a French word, yeah, but is that really how the French pronounce it? I took a year of French and can't figure out where the R sound comes from. That right there, those are the words that kill young children on spelling tests. As for someone just learning English--how would they ever figure out how to pronounce that if they saw it in a book?Oh, and let's not forget figures of speech. You've got your cliches: "When I saw that bull coming at me, I ran like the wind." It's old, it's overused, and whoever wrote it did not realize that wind does not run. Wind blows.You've got your just-plain-goofy figures of speech: "I went and shot some bull with my buddies." Someone said that to my high-school Spanish teacher when he was still new to the States, and he didn't get it. He thought his pals were literally getting together and shooting bulls. His pals had to explain to him that no, they were just chatting, having a good time. You see the problem.But if English is an atrocious language to learn--which it certainly would be--it's also the perfect punner's tool. Take the statement above: "Wind does not run. Wind blows." Are you catching the pun here? "Wind blows. Wind really blows." In what other language could you make that pun? It's just so perfect. And, of course, only in America (to my knowledge anyway) could someone be sewing a dress and her goofy friend make the following comment:"Sleeves are not meant to be stepped on. They are meant to be run through with arms!"I rest my case.*Credit where it's due: I couldn't have come up with that whole parkway/driveway without Richard Lederer's Crazy English. His original question was, "In what other language do you park in a driveway and drive in a parkway?"
