[ā¦] Itās a useful thing for lots of people that there is a language thatās almost a global language, you can get around the world using English, but never think that this is because the English language is so fine and noble and bold and true and suited to this purpose. Itās in some ways a rather rotten language to have fallen into this privileged potision. It has a truly terrible writing system - learning to spell English is just awful. You can literally learn how to spell Finnish, and get everything right - so youād always have a hundred percent on any spelling bee - in about ten minutes. And thatās generous. Thatās just an alphabet that works, and nothing else to learn. No exceptions. Enter English - thousands of exceptions, and even years of education leave some people quite uncertain about spelling. Whatās more, itās rather difficult to pronounce compared to a lot of languages. It doesnāt have a simple consonant-vowel syllable structure. You have syllables like āstrengthsā. And not everyone can do n-g-th-s in a go, and without stumbling or sticking extra vowels in. It could have been better chosen. And its grammar? English has about two hundred irregular verbs, and theyāre so complex that native speakers get some of them wrong. Occasionally you hear people say that they āsungā a song, when they mean that they āsangā a song, and so on. Irregular past tenses, and about two hundred of them. And various different patterns, I donāt know, thirty or fourty patterns that they follow. Do you know the number of irregular verbs in Swahili? Zero. There are no irregular verbs. The language is highly inflected, but every verb is regular. That would have been a lovely language to have as a world language. Itās already a trade language across the whole of East Africa. And what do we get? English. Well, thatās unfortunate. Though itās lucky if youāre an English speaker and you want to travel in foreign countries. Just donāt ever imagine that you deserve it. You donāt deserve it, youāre just lucky. -Ā UQx WRITE101x Interview with Geoffrey Pullum - [x]
The only thing that doesnāt sit right with me about this interview is how he not once acknowledges that English is a global language largely due to grisly historical reasons rooted in exploitation. And he says it could have been ābetter chosenā and that itās āunfortunateā we now have English. So yeah.Ā The rest is an okay read, though.