Thursday, July 17, 2003

"The reason why England has one of the best languages in the world is that we were invaded by nearly everybody, so we developed a slave patois, which is what English is. English is like a pidgin language. We were invaded by the Romans, so as a result, we've got loads of Italian words to add to the Celtic words we had before. Then after the Romans, we had the Saxons coming in, so we got German words. After the Saxons are finished with us, we get the Normans so we get French added to the language. German, French, Italian, these are actually proper languages and have proper linguistic structures, something English does not have. Those languages have got order and you have to learn all these parts of speech and feminine nouns and masculine nouns, whereas with English it was, "Let's take the best bits of their language and not bother with all the fussy stuff because there's no point, and everyone knows what you mean." We got English, so as a result we've got eight different words that mean different shades of one thing. That is brilliant to a writer because they don't mean exactly the same thing. If there is a word from another language that we don't have, we just take that word."
--Alan Moore
Comic Book Artist Magazine #25 (p. 32) June 2003



That's why English is such a pain in the ass to learn for people coming from other languages (and much of America). There are bits and pieces of other languages and the structures of those languages. It's like designing a building out of various different styles of architecture. Sometimes it would work, and sometimes it wouldn't.

English has a structure, but it's a hodge-podge of rules from other languages.

What does all this have to do with anything? You be the judge.

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