Week 4: English Sucks

Last week, my mentor Ms. Abdelaziz commented on my week 3 part 1 blog post about how Bill Bryson, American author, wrote about how the English language is inherently confusing and difficult because of an abundance of unnecessary vocabulary and lacks seemingly necessary terminology that other languages have. So, I decided to buy the book Crazy English by RIchard Lederer. (I mentioned this book in my week 2 post) Crazy English basically puts into words how sometimes English makes no sense and is infuriating to even native speakers. As a grammar nazi and someone who is extremely peculiar about language, even the first chapter made me furious because it basically outlines every mistake people can possible make and every nonsensical word/phrase/sentence in the English language. Also, I realized that this may not directly apply to learning ESL, but I thought it was at least a little relevant and I couldn't stop reading.

In the first chapter, he basically outlines every single problem with English he's ever encountered. In the beginning, Lederer lists basic words in the English language that don't make sense and says: "Sometimes you have to believe that all English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane." Here are some that I've found the most interesting:

• Why do people drive in a parkway and park in a driveway?

• Why do we transport something by car in a shipment, but transport something by ship in cargo?

• Why do we call them apartments when they are all together?

• If pro and con are opposites, is Congress the opposite of progress?

• Why are sharp speech and blunt speech the same and quite a lot and quite a few the same, but overlook and oversee different?

• And perhaps the best paragraph I've ever read: "Why is phonetic not spelled phonetically? Why is it so hard to remember how to spell mnemonic? Why doesn’t onomatopoeia sound like what it is? Why is the word abbreviation so long? Why does the word monosyllabic consist of five syllables? Why is there no synonym for synonym or thesaurus? And why is there an s in lisp?"

Then, he lists phrases in English that don't mean what they should or what people expect them to mean. Here are some I found I've seen in my life and irk me the most:

• I could care less is supposed to mean "I care so little I couldn't possibly reach a level of caring less than I already do," but I could care less is the opposite.

• That movie kept me literally glued to my seat is supposed to mean rhetorically "That movie was so good," but instead literally states you were glued to the seat.

• Extraordinary should mean even more ordinary than ordinary (extra-fine means even finer than fine), but instead it means the opposite of ordinary.

• Put your best foot forward is not grammatically correct unless you have more than two feet, otherwise it should be Put your better foot forward.

Then, Lederer goes into redundancy and oxymorons that people use regularly like jumbo shrimp and shrimp scampi (which means shrimp shrimp). Later, he takes apart the longest words in the English language like antidisestablishmentarianism.

In conclusion, English sucks. Even most native speakers make mistakes like I could care less and don't understand why shipments are by car and cargo is by ship. If we don't even understand our language, how do we expect others to learn it and understand? I have so much respect for people who are trying to learn English.

In other news, I have contacted both Stanford Language Center and SJSU International Gateway and I hope to hear back on them soon about allowing me to sit in on ESL classes and talking to some students. After talking to some of the surveyees who took the first version of my survey, I've slightly altered some questions so that it is more clear what I am asking and what information would actually benefit my project. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to make it into the newsletter this week, but I will send out the new one to the BASIS Parents Google Group again.