Photo credit: www.indianyouth.net

Learning English as a second language in school I always thought English is the simplest language there is. Most people in the world speak it, so it can’t be that difficult. I mean, let’s be serious, in contrast to most other European languages there is only one article and apart from a few exceptions, forming the past tense of a verb is just adding -ed or -t to the end. Simple as that, right? WRONG!

I mean, I had accepted the fact that the k in knee is just a visual accessory, exactly like the h in ghost, but I was not prepared for the onslaught of obstacles that would be thrown my way.  It all started when I was confronted with the fact that the town Reading, is not actually pronounced like the verb reading. That just rattled my whole perspective of the world. And my troubles didn’t stop there. Why is Greenwich not actually a green witch, but /ˈɡrɪnɪdʒ/, and what is up with ignoring the ce in Leicester and coming to /ˈlɛstə/?

And that’s not even considering the many homonyms, like flower and flour. They are spelled completely different but pronounced the exact same /ˈflaʊə/. What is up with that? Imagine the look on my face when I realised that a simple sentence like ‘Mary hit the guy with a bat‘ has more than one meaning. (Think about it: who is hitting who with what? And is being done with a wooden stick or a nocturnal mammal? – thank god we learned how to draw syntax trees!)

I thought studying the English Language might actually answer some of my questions, but no such luck. In our first lecture in first year, our lecturer told us that there actually are more exceptions to rules in the English Language and that most supposed ‘rules’ are completely random and not clearly explainable. GREAT! Exactly what I wanted to hear!

How is anyone ever supposed to perfect the English Language with all these problems? Don’t get me wrong, I love this language, otherwise I wouldn’t be studying it, but occasionally I am still baffled by what exactly people are talking about.

Check out how Taylor Lautner struggles with the same thing from 3:20 -4:00 in this BBC3 interview with Greg Davies. (Not even the Americans can get English right – I think that makes me feel slightly better now.)

Greg Davies tests Taylor Lautner on British Citizenship Test