How the English language became such a mess

BBC News ^ | June 8, 2015 | James Harbeck

[MinorityRepublican]

First, the greed: invasion and theft. The Romans invaded Britain in the 1st Century AD and brought their alphabet; in the 7th Century, the Angles and Saxons took over, along with their language. Starting in the 9th Century, Vikings occupied parts of England and brought some words (including they, displacing the Old English hie).

Then the Norman French conquered in 1066 – and replaced much of the vocabulary with French, including words which over time became beef, pork, invade, tongue and person.

[beaversmom]

Fyi...language ping.

[familyop]

Fellow Americans, don’t try to use Oxford English, and do certainly avoid trying to emulate Limey slang. If you fail to follow that advice, you’ll end up sounding like a Frenchman.

[a fool in paradise]

Things really collapsed when twerk became a word.

[SMGFan]

I remember watching The Story of English

[BenLurkin]

What mess?

English is a rich an expressive language.

In a sane world — every human would be learning English.

[familyop]

So let’s pronounce owah ahs. On second thought, maybe we shouldn’t pronounce that way.

[ClearCase_guy]

Too right! I try to talk all blighty but I get at sixes and sevens straight off.

[doc1019]

Ain’t nut’n wrong wiff the English language that couldn’t be cured wiff writing in cursive wouldn’t fix.

[nickcarraway]

According to who? This is part of the brilliance of the language.

[ully2]

The PC police.

[RushIsMyTeddyBear]

First word that that stood out in first sentence. ‘Greed’.

No thanks, BBC. I’m sick of the commie class warfare.

[SoCal Pubbie]

Very true. The weaknesses of the language are also its strength.

[oincobx]

English has 205 ways to spell 44 sounds. Consider this - "cat," "kangaroo," "chrome," and "queue" all start with the same sound, and "eight" and "ate" sound identical. Meanwhile, "cough" doesn’t rhyme with either "enough," "through,"8n "furlough" or "bough." Even some identically spelled words, such as "tear," can be pronounced differently and mean different things.

Mastering such a language takes a long time and requires abilities that most children don’t develop until the middle or latter part of elementary school. 

By contrast, a language such as Finnish has regular spelling rules. Finnish also has the added bonus of a nearly one-to-one correspondence between sounds and letters, meaning fewer rules to learn. So after Finnish children learn their alphabet, learning to read is pretty straightforward—they can read well within three months of starting formal learning.

[Jonty30]

The Dutch determined our grammar structure.

[the OlLine Rebel]

Yes!

Actually, it was long and I did not see it all. Think I only caught it when it was half way through.

Seems like they never showed it again.

[Secret Agent Man]

Personally I enjoy a language that doesn’t assign a g-d arbitrary “gender” to each and every word and makes you use it differently based on that.

[Veto!]

Nope, it ain’t that bad, fellah. We’ums here in ammerica unnerstan it poifecly. We don’t need yore steenkin’ standardization.

[the OlLine Rebel]

Yes, it actually is.

English owes its expressiveness as well as its confusion to its “diversity” - which libs ought to love. It’s a mish-mash of languages, really.

Other languages are a bit restricted and yet also cumbersome - anyone for gender? (The only true meaning of the word!)

[the OlLine Rebel]

If there is one thing I would change, it would be the alphabet we use. 1 letter for every sound. “A” has so many versions, e.g.

Only problem is we would probably end up with 75 letters.