Over the weekend, your resident lexophile watched a few sections from “The Story of English” (the language) and revisited some of the reasons that English is such a strange language. Later on, I read this article, which might be interesting for those who like language and/or those for whom English is not their native language and would like to know WTF is going on.
Why is English so Wierdly Different From Other Languages
https://aeon.co/essays/why-is-english-so-weirdly-different-from-other-languages
English really is an interesting language. For example, one of the reasons words like “enough” and “knife” are spelled so differently than they sound is because when spelling started to get standardized, those letters were still pronounced and only later did people stop doing so. Also, one of the reasons our grammar is both simpler (for the most part) and less consistent is because Vikings and Anglo-Saxons were trying to talk to each other and so badly spoken Old English (i.e. Anglo-Saxon) evolved into Middle English, where verb inflections and noun genders were pretty much dropped.
The Story of English is on Youtube for those who are interested. If you don’t have the patience, there’s also this “History of English in 10 minutes,” which is amusing and covers a few highlights.
[video:https://youtu.be/SfKhlJIAhew]
(In each article, there are things that go against things I’d previously learned, so I there are a bunch of points that I and/or others could quibble about)