I Get, I Run, I Do

Alphabet soup

I'd like to talk about something we all take for granted; it really gets no examination except by grade school teachers. I'm talking about the English language itself.

I've studied French for four years and Latin for two. Have always been struck by the fact that language is simultaneously a denotative conveyor of meaning, and also an artistic flow of verbal, poetic expressions. English is interesting, in that it's the bastard child of at least five different cultures: Old German, Latin, French, Scandinavian and Gaelic. It's interesting that an aspiring universalist, L. L. Zamenhof, created a whole new language called "Esperanto" at the end of the 19th century in hopes that it would be adopted as a universal language, much as was recently done with the Euro for continental currency. Turns out there's really no need for Esperanto, because English serves that purpose. English is the unholy alliance of Romance language and Germanic languages -- two strains that have seldom ever met or gotten along elsewhere.

What do I hate about English? Several things, most of them German in origin. We have too many irregular verbs, and they are the most commonly used ("to get", "to run", "to do"). We have too many words with silent consonants ("night", "should", "daughter","school"). We have too many words spelled alike but pronounced differently: "prove" vs "love". Or how about "bough" vs "enough" vs "cough" which was good for a comedy bit on "I Love Lucy". The German-based words tend to be harsh and guttural; they don't flow like music to the ears. Some very forward-thinking English monks and courtiers saw the messiness of all this several centuries in the past. They Latinized our alphabet and banished one German letter (representing the "th" sound I think). Along with French wine, they imported many French words too. Thank you, monks for all the bon mots!

What do I like about English? I do like the fact that it ties into so many other cultures. It's a grab bag of words from everywhere. I like the fact that compared to other Germanic languages, it has a few vowels between the consonants and you can speak or sing without harshness, without sounding like you want to invade Poland. When I buy new electronic gadgets, the instruction booklets frequently have the most common European languages. Interesting that I can nearly decipher Italian or Spanish; the German mystifies me completely. How can they need so many words for one simple thought? How can they cram that many consonants into one word? If you're German and reading this, you must have fluency in both and maybe you can explain it. But for now, I'll speak English and try to say "obtain" when I mean "get", because "obtain" is a prettier word.