Some misgivings with English
Don't get me wrong...I like English. Those beautiful expressions with a play of words always get me. Infact, that's the main reason I read novels... I love the way authors express certain things which completely takes the reading experience to a new level. But having said that, English is one of the most ridiculously difficult languages to learn, esp. to speak. I am never sure how a newly encountered word should be pronounced. The problem lies in the fact that, many a time, there is no correlation between how you write a word and how you pronounce it. For example, how am I supposed to know that 'Calle' is supposed to be pronounced with a 'y', when a 'pillar' or a 'collar' have their double l's intact. If you want 'll' to be pronounced as a 'y', why can't we just have the word as 'Caye' and get done with it already. One of the reasons for this inconsistency is the fact that lot of words in English have been incorporated from other languages like Spanish, Arabic etc. Ok, I can agree with that to an extent but that excuse is not entirely true. For one, instead of blindly incorporating words from a foreign language into the English vocabulary, we can adapt them to suit the nativity. Second, this ludicrousness is not limited to imported words...what about those silent k's in 'knight', 'know' etc. I don't think these are foreign words...so I don't understand whats the need for a letter to be present in writing but silent when speaking. How simple would life be, if we had words like 'nite' and 'no' (ok, this second guy has a different meaning already..but I guess you got my point). And don't even get me started on the various styles of English out there, like U.S, U.K etc.
In that regard, I love the other two languages that I know, Hindi and Telugu. The beauty lies in the fact that What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG). If you tell me any new word in these languages, I can exactly tell what it looks like in writing (with a high probability...i am copping out here). I think its easy to learn a language if its like this. If I come to think about it, the reason why these Indian languages are not as ridiculous as English is probably because of the existence of a large number of 'vowels' (if they can be called so). English has just 5 (a,e,i,o,u) but Telugu and Hindi have loads of them. What this means for us, is there are lot of combinations of vowels and consonants that one can play with and coin new words...no need for those strange rules and silent/differently pronounced letters. On the flip side though, it might take a bit longer to learn the alphabet but its worth it as long as its not too extreme. I was once told by my Chinese lab mate that their alphabet has 100s of letters if not 1000s and they take like 3 years to master it!!! Needless to say I didn't sleep for next two days :) I wonder how those guys chat in IMs. God bless those 'em.
For English, though the alphabet is shorter the import is very high. But, thats one of the side effects of trying to make a language universal,.....it has to cater to all the sensibilities. Since, I cannot influence the 'whoever' defines the English language and its rules... I guess I have to deal with my love-hate relationship with it.
In that regard, I love the other two languages that I know, Hindi and Telugu. The beauty lies in the fact that What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG). If you tell me any new word in these languages, I can exactly tell what it looks like in writing (with a high probability...i am copping out here). I think its easy to learn a language if its like this. If I come to think about it, the reason why these Indian languages are not as ridiculous as English is probably because of the existence of a large number of 'vowels' (if they can be called so). English has just 5 (a,e,i,o,u) but Telugu and Hindi have loads of them. What this means for us, is there are lot of combinations of vowels and consonants that one can play with and coin new words...no need for those strange rules and silent/differently pronounced letters. On the flip side though, it might take a bit longer to learn the alphabet but its worth it as long as its not too extreme. I was once told by my Chinese lab mate that their alphabet has 100s of letters if not 1000s and they take like 3 years to master it!!! Needless to say I didn't sleep for next two days :) I wonder how those guys chat in IMs. God bless those 'em.
For English, though the alphabet is shorter the import is very high. But, thats one of the side effects of trying to make a language universal,.....it has to cater to all the sensibilities. Since, I cannot influence the 'whoever' defines the English language and its rules... I guess I have to deal with my love-hate relationship with it.
