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Peculiarities of the english LanguageAll my life I have spoken the english language and have never had to think about what I say or how I say it. I was fortunate to have a well-spoken mother with a beautiful accent and grasp of the english language, who read books to us every night before bed time until we could do so ourselves. I absorbed the peculiarities of this weird and wonderful language at a young age when my mind was young and ripe for knowledge and I passed all my exams at school, never having to really study grammar, taking it so for granted! And then? *drum roll*? I enrolled in the TEFL course, and oh, do I feel sorry for all those poor souls who are attempting to learn this strange language of ours! I vaguely recall a song from my childhood by Wendy Fine called ?english is a Funny Language?. The lyrics went something along the lines of ?There?s so many different ways to say things? listen and you?ll see? more than one house is houses, but more than one mouse is mice not mouses?. There have been many more poems written since with similar sentiments. So where do all these strange words and rules for talking english come from, and why do the rules not apply to all grammar and vocabulary? ?I? before ?e?, except after ?c? is the rule of thumb for words like believe, friend, deceive. But foreign? Vein? Ancient? Society? Weird! While we have so many words in the english language, and still learn new ones every day that often delight me, it seems that the vast, seemingly bottomless pit of english vocabulary, which is added to daily by new technology, is not enough. We still have words that are spelled the same and yet have different meanings! Dove and dove, present and present, desert and desert. The dove dove into the valley, the present was presented and the soldiers were deserted in the desert. And I?m still not finished! What about pronunciation of words that are spelled in the same way! Bough and dough and cough, hiccough are perfect examples of this. It appears, from browsing several different websites regarding the History of the english language, that many of these exceptions come from the english language being added to and adapted over the years by other languages. As an article on Wikipedia says, ?english developed very much into a ?borrowing? language with an enormously disparate vocabulary?. Its origin is West Germanic, added to and changed later by the Scandinavian, french and Anglo-Norman, and still later being further added to by words and terms from other languages, German, Dutch, Latin and Ancient greek. One can quite understand then how, though we try to abide by the rules, those sneaky exceptions still wait for us around the corner, confusing us, frustrating second language learners and keeping us all on our toes. But despite the strangeness and complicatedness of the english language, it is beautiful language, a passionate language, which has the potential for enormous emotional impact and expression and such range that one can express oneself in wonderful way. After slogging through the ITTT course and realising just how difficult it is with its grammatical rules, tenses, spelling and pronunciations, I am grateful to be able to speak it so well, and look forward to teaching others how to use this peculiar language called english in the correct way.
