Why is English so illogical?

Question

I got my Bachelors in English from Ohio State, but English messes with my mind. I hear on NPR from Commentators. what do they do? They comment. they don't commentate. why the extra syllable?

Ablute? Do you ablute? not according to dictionary.com. but if you perform ablutions, you should, according to the rules of a regular language, you'd have to ablute. I certainly abluted this morning. Otherwise I'd smell pretty bad.

not just "driving on parkways and parking on driveways"

Answer 1

What a crazy language this is!

Can you read these correctly the first time?

1) The bandage was wound around the wound.
2) The farm was used to produce produce.
3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
4) We must polish the Polish furniture.
5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.
6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present .
8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.
9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
10) I did not object to the object.
11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row .
13) They were too close to the door to close it.
14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.
15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
18) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.
19) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
20) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

Let's face it - English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England, nor French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat. We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth, beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices? Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it? Why do we give a **** when we care but take a **** when go to the bathroom. Where do we take it to?

If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell?

How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which, an alarm goes off by going on.

English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all. That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.

PS. - Why doesn't "Buick" rhyme with "quick"

You lovers of the English language might enjoy this:

There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that is "UP."

It's easy to understand UP, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP? At a meeting, why does a topic come UP? Why do we speak UP and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report?

We call UP our friends. And we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver, we warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen. We lock UP the house and some guys fix UP the old car. At other times the little word has real special meaning. People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses. To be dressed is one thing, but to be dressed UP is special.

And this UP is confusing: A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP. We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night.

We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP! To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP, look the word UP in the dictionary. In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4th of the page and can add UP to about thirty definitions. I f you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used. It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don't give UP, you may wind UP with a hundred or more. When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP. When the sun comes out we say it is clearing UP .

When it rains, it wets the earth and often messes things UP.

When it doesn't rain for awhile, things dry UP.

One could go on and on, but I'll wrap it UP, for now my time is UP, so........... it is time to shut UP.....!

Answer 2

You are absolutely right, of course. The English language is a pretty chaotic one.
Why should that be? God only knows. It may be because it has borrowed words from just about every other language and tries to incorporate them. It may also be because it is spoken by so many people with such different cultures (the UK, US, Canada and Australia all speak the language but with very different meanings, each culture shaping how they use the language). An example of this is the word 'gotten'. It's widely used in the US, but unknown in the UK (except in the form of 'forgotten').
You also make the point that English is grammatically inconsistent. You're right again with that.
Why should all this be?
No idea. And I bet no one else knows either. Put it down to variety.
But you know what, that's EXACTLY why I think it's one of the best languages. Its shape, form and structure make it very adaptable and capable of carrying an infinity of meaning. Compare it to French - which is a very formal and structured language. German is even worse.
Yes, it's inconsistent. But that's its strength.

Answer 3

Perhaps the answer lies in the history of the English language

A computerised survey of about 80,000 words in the old Shorter Oxford Dictionary (3rd ed.) was published in Ordered Profusion by Thomas Finkenstaedt and Dieter Wolff (1973) which estimated the origin of English words as follows:

* French, including Old French and early Anglo-French: 28.3%
* Latin, including modern scientific and technical Latin: 28.24%
* Other Germanic languages (including Old English, Old Norse, and Dutch): 25%
* Greek: 5.32%
* No etymology given: 4.03%
* Derived from proper names: 3.28%
* All other languages contributed less than 1%

With such a wide variety of backgrounds, why should English not be so illogical?

However, despite the lack of logic in this language, English is ranked second worldwide in number of speakers. So like it or not, face the fact that English is necessary.

Furthermore, there are more Enlish speakers in China than in the United State, despite all its lack of logic

Answer 4

English is illogical because most of its rules there are exceptions. Unlike mathematics

Answer 5

The problem is the fact that English has its roots in so many languages, everything from Saxon to Latin. Each word tends to follow its original structure, so as a consequence, there are all kinds of muddled up messes. There have been attempts to simplify it in the past, but they never caught on.

Answer 6

There are many more difficult languages than English. Some languages have the exact same word for several different things. For example, in Cambodian, the word for 'rice' and 'eat' and 'hungry' is the same.

The popular rumor that indigenous Alaskans have dozens of words for 'snow'.

Answer 7

As my girlfriend was farding, I was inclined to answer your question. Even though I am standing straight up, I am inclined. English, being used in various Places other than where it originated, has been studied and therefore changed. There is no logic, just desperate attempt at communication.

Answer 8

English is not much different than other languages. For example Gato in Spanish is cat right.....Well it also means car jack

Answer 9

English is a hodge-podge of variant root words borrowed from other linguistic systems. Hell, they just made the work "Google" into an acceptable verb. So if you google something, have you performed a googlution? no.

Answer 10

it was only after i started learning thai that i realize what a crazy and hard language english is.