ENGLISH?

      I heard once that English is the hardest language to learn. It was difficult for me to understand why people would have a tough time with a language that I was taught from the cradle. But English, or at least our American version, can be confusing, even for those who only speak English.

     American English can be as confusing, strange, and vast as the nation itself, with the different regions, accents (only y’all.. I don’t have an accent), foods, and cultures. At one time America was considered the melting pot of the world, where the “tired, huddled, masses” came and we were all supposed to blend together like a giant smoothie. It didn’t happen quite the way it was envisioned.

   We are more like a giant salad bar, where we take a little here and a little there.  Immigrants brought their words as well as their skills from the old country. Food, drink, dress, music, and even romance were influenced and in many cases improved by the addition of a foreign word. Sometimes the people and language were already here, in the case of the Mexicans and Native Americans. The American salad bar of language is very impressive.

     It would seem that it should be simple; with only 26 letters, how can it get messed up? On the basic level you have a subject (noun) and a verb (action). Dogs bark, I sing, and politicians lie. It should be simple, straightforward and easy to understand, right?  If only we could keep it on the basic level.

    But we have to add to it, spice it up and add more details. So now, dogs bark loudly, I sing badly, and politicians lie constantly. That’s not too bad, except we can always take it to another level and add more.  That means small dogs bark loudly, I sing very badly, and all politicians lie constantly. I can still live with that, but we moved away from simple and got the political correctness crowd involved as well as the wordsmiths, who put a new spin on words. Remember a former president that answered a question with, “That depends on what the meaning of “is” is.”

    In the PC world, canines express themselves verbally, I am still tone challenged, and politicians misspeak (often).

   I think I have a fair command of the English language and can express myself verbally or in writing. For that I owe a debt of thanks to my mother and to the teachers I had in school. They gave me the basic understanding of how to put together a sentence in a way that other people could understand me.

   And to my high-school English and Journalism teacher, a special thanks for teaching me to look at all language as a source of humor. He taught me that there are rules of composition and rules of grammar, but those rules get broken all the time. And that gives the rest of us something to laugh at.