I really love our language.
It's been with me for my whole life (although admittedly I didn't understand it for some of it!) It conveys any sentiment well. It can convey the simplest of messages with a few, or a thousand words. It can be angry and hateful, loving and beautiful. It's a good language.
Don't get me wrong of course. I'm sure that other languages can do all that too. The thing is though, that English (albeit in different forms, and with different vernacular) is quite universal, and is literally spoken all around the world - if not as a first language, then often as the second.
For all that though. Some of it's conventions are distinctly odd.
To start with: Silent letters.
What is the bloody point of silent letters!? By advent of the fact that they are silent, surely they just aren't worth using. It makes learning certain words confusing, it makes typing them longer. Why bother.
Knife for instance. Why not nife? Its 4 letters long, the same as fork - so it would be a good fit. Nife and Fork.
Sign is another good example. You don't say it as si-g-n do you? No. So how did that pesky g sneak in there?
Then there is shifting plural letters.
You have a wife, but not wifes. You have wives. When did that f turn into a v?
You have a die if you have one, but dice for two - how come its not dies?(Obviously, a word with another meaning entirely!) A whole other letter has sneaked in!
Then you get the transmuting y's. You have a cherry, or some cherries!
Why so much complication? No wonder people rarely get things right.
Our punctuation too is a further bugbear. To put it bluntly, there is an awful lot of it, and only about 5% of the population probably know how to use even 90% of it properly.
I have a good respect for the language, and so I try and use it properly where possible. I am well aware however, that my punctuation could sometimes be better - and I am far from alone.
I have a sneaky suspicion that the resolution to this will not be to fix the people by increasing the education on the subject. Instead, they will just phase out some of the conventions of our language altogether.
Look at apostrophes. The most abused of all punctuation. The famous grocer's apostrophe, has been print for years. Sooner or later, people are going to give us on using them altogether, rather than just getting them wrong all of the bloody time.
Why does it all have to be so damned complicated?
Beats me.
Rant over.
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