English Is Soooo Strange

I was born in the City of St. Louis and learned to speak English at my mother's knee. From a very early age I learned to love reading and writing and took to my native tongue as a fish does to water. But, as an adult I came to realize that English is one truly wacky language. I didn't fully realize how wacky until I studied Spanish in college and found out in the first class that each individual letter of the Spanish alphabet is always pronounced the same way. Over the years that observation became increasingly important as I thought more and more about American English.

 As an example, what about the way certain letters, like “i” and “y”, are pronounced: ally, by, lie, and sky? It may be easy for Americans but what about the poor folks learning English as a second language? As soon as they figure out what’s going on someone asks them to pronounce the “y” in actually, crazy, happy, and only. So, why isn’t the “y” in “by” or “sky” pronounced like the “y” in “actually” and “only”? And what about those always strange homonyms like cite (to refer to), sight (vision), site (location) or bough (branch), bow (violin), bow (gesture) or eye, aye (agreement), and I? You can almost hear the desperate cries: “Please, can someone make sense of this dumb shit language?”

That process of reflection eventually led (or is it lead?) me to wonder about strange English words and the way we use them. I’m not talking about obscure words, like rheology or tergiversation. Nor do I mean foreign words that have been bootlegged into English, like hors d'oeuvres or weltschmerz.

I mean words we use in everyday situations but seldom, if ever, consider their essential strangeness. Words like reckless. I mean, what is a reck and how do you do without it to become reckless? That brings to mind another question. If you’ve never had a car accident, does that mean your driving record is wreck-less? And if you are listening to that conversation how are you to know the difference between wreck-less and reckless in terms of driving? And while we're on the topic of pronunciation, why isn't gone pronounced like bone? That’s strange English in action.

Did you ever wonder why Americans say vis-i-ted or start-ed but then say park'd and smil'd? Why do some people say be-lov'd and others be-lov-ed? Which is right and why is the “e” before the “d” silent in so many cases? Confusing is the English word for it. For sake of brevity I’m not even thinking about discussing all those silent letters in English, as in climb, hour, business, and island. That’s another column.

Just about now you may feel nonplussed, which means bewildered and unsure how to respond. That word theoretically comes from “not plussed” although “plussed” itself is not a recognized English word. It's almost enough to make you feel unruly, which means wild or uncontrolled. Supposedly, ruly means neat and orderly but in all my years I've never seen it used that way or spoken in a sentence. “One look at his desk tells you he's a ruly sort.” No way, or as my younger friends would put it, NFW.

If you know someone who's learning English as a second language you've certainly heard the complaint: Does this *&%#$^@ language have rules or do you have to memorize every single blinkety-blank word? But at least one thing's for sure. If my granddaughter's English teacher tells her one more time that it's pronounced drown'd instead of drown-ed I'm going to give him an up close and personal demonstration in the nearest swimming pool.