I am no expert in the English Language. That said, one must admit that English has to be the most difficult language to understand. Even for those whose first language is in fact English. I was reading a newspaper headline the other day which read: 'Police shoot man with cutlass.' I thought to myself, 'how on earth can the police do that?' 'Is this cutlass a new weapon now being used by the police force?' Then there was this headline which was real funny, even if the alleged incident itself was not. It read: 'Impotent man freed of rape charge. Evidence couldn't stand up in court.' The more one studies the English Language the more and more bewildered one can become. One example of this is when it comes to plurals. I had always wondered why the plural of mouse is mice but the plural of house couldn't be hice. I'm sure many non-English speakers are wondering the same thing. If the plural of man is men, why can't the plural of pan be pen? It has always been quite confusing. Have you ever wondered what it feels like for a Spanish speaker who is learning English for the first time to understand that? Another thing that can be quite bewildering too is the amount of words that mean almost the same thing. They are called synonyms. So one particular word can have multiple synonyms.
So the word 'big' can have numerous words that also mean big. Huge, enormous, gigantic, stupendous etc. Puzzling isn't it? One other observation about the English language is the amount of foreign words that get incorporated into the language that you just have to remember to pronounce the proper way. Like the word rendezvous. Well everyone knows that its a French word that is pronounced as 'run day voo' and of course it means to meet at an agreed time and place. So in other words I must also learn French in order to understand English too? Then there is the added confusion with words starting with 'F' and 'PH.' Why can't the word 'pharmacy' be spelled as FARMACY? After all, isn't the word farm spelt with an 'F'? Then we have this thing called homophones which are words that are pronounced the same way but are spelt differently and have entirely different meanings. Like 'there' and 'their.' Growing up as a young boy and doing English in school, I was always at pains deciphering when to use which 'there.' Or is it 'their?' You see the problem? Even native English speakers like myself are at pains to fully understand the concepts of the dreaded English language.
Apart from the above mentioned problems regarding the homophones, there is also the additional pain of which type of spelling to use for other words. Should I use the British spelling or the American spelling? The British spell fibre F I B R E whereas the Americans spell it as F I B E R. Even when I wrote the British spelling for this post, I was 'corrected' by the spell check for making an 'error.' So you see I really can't blame foreign speakers for having problems with the English language. It is certainly the most difficult language to understand. So the next time someone tells you something in plain English that you couldn't quite grasp the first time and they ask sarcastically if they were speaking Greek, a clever response would be, ' I'm sure the Greeks say something similar about English.'
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