Dumb History of English

Today, 1.5 billion people speak English using the same words but they do not understand each-other. Apparently, this is because they all speak terrible English. But who gets to decide whether someone’s English is good or bad? The Brits get to decide it. Yes, that is correct. This is because they think they invented English.

But did the Brits really invent English? Well, the answer is not very straightforward. It’s a straight up, NO. Even the word English is not an English word. It is named after a German-speaking tribe called Angles that invaded them. English is just badly pronounced French, French linguists would argue because they like arguing. However, truth is, French itself is badly pronounced Latin.

Derived from French vocabulary and German grammar, English is as original as it comes. When a bunch of rowdy German tribes invaded what would be present day England, they brought their linguistic baggage with them. And when the Vikings invaded them, English began to sound like grunts and norse whispers. And when the Normans invaded them during the middle ages waving their dictionaries, the English stole their entire legal jargon in revenge.

And after coming out of 300 years of French Rule, the English wanted to make English great again. Not that it was great at any time before that, but why not? It was the perfect time. Gutenberg just gave the greatest gift from God, the Printing Press. He successfully died bankrupt and penniless after successfully publishing 200 books in three years. Can’t blame him as only twenty-three people in Germany knew how to read at that time and seventeen of them could not afford his books. However, the English knew how to make the most of this technology. The Protestant Revolution in the 16th Century, Shakespeare in 17th Century, Industrial Revolution of 18th Century and Colonialism during 19th Century all played into the hands of English language.

Bad English

In summary, English picked up words from everyone else and gave it back to everyone else. As a result, speaking English feels like putting together a jigsaw puzzle with many pieces not fitting and many others missing. English pronunciation is full of exceptions and excuses. ‘Colonel’ needs to be pronounced as ‘Kernel’ and ‘read’ can be pronounced in any way you want based on your need. ‘To’, ‘too’ and ‘two’ are all pronounced in the same way but mean three different things. Australia has three ‘A’s in it and none of them are pronounced in the same way. See? This is why I got a ‘C’ in English.

My teachers used to say that my English was bad but did they actually mean ‘English is bad’? Regardless, Bad English is the reason English is so widespread today. Colonialism as well. Colonialism is a condition where an European finds himself looking at a land or an island with puppy eyes and asks himself, “Is this for me?” 

Anyway, let’s not get into that. 

Instead, let’s get into a room where a German, Singaporean and Nigerian are having a great time speaking to each-other in English. An American walks in with his baseball idiom, “you hit it out of the park!”. Suddenly, all of them do not understand English. English is no longer a piece of cake. 

I’m starting to feel like there is no such thing as good English. Every English is right for the region it is spoken in. Say it a-lu-min-ium or a-lu-min-um. Who cares? Both are right somewhere. So, let us focus on bigger issues. Even among White people problems, there are whiter problems. No reason to be a snob. In a language as widespread as English, there are bound to be variants. Look at Covid!

One reason for bad English everywhere is how confusing it is to learn. This is the whitest problem if ever there was. Look at this sentence: she told him that she loved him. Now try to put “only” in it, where do you put it? If you know for sure, you do not know English enough. Much of English does not make sense. Look at pineapple. It is neither a pine nor an apple. But it’s a pineapple. It is only in English that you can sound genuinely wrong but be grammatically correct. ‘I believe that that pineapple is sweet.’ It feels wrong like wearing socks over shoe but trust me, using “that that” is okay in English. That’s that.

And then there’s this. Bad real English cannot exist but real bad English can. Real bad English is when you need five letters just to pronounce the first letter of the word ‘queue’. The other four letters are just waiting in the queue forever to be pronounced. Next, green little men cannot exist while little green men can. This is because, for the English, opinions always come first, facts follow. Remember this order, Mark Forsyth would say: opinion-size-age-shape-color-origin-material-purpose-noun. Adjectives absolutely have to be in this order. Mess it up and be prepared to be judged by the Brits.

Make no mistake, the Brits are great at English. Where a normal person would answer, “He was fine, nothing special” when asked about her date, a Victorian would say, “He conducted himself with satisfactory propriety. He was tolerable, scarcely distinguished from the common run of men.” This sounds beautiful and even makes sense when you need 20 extra words to fill up your 2000 word essay. But often times, it could feel like sitting on a middle seat during a twelve hour flight. You are just waiting for it to end. 

English Lite

USA solved this problem forever by creating English Lite. When the British explained that the word ‘Autumn’ originates from the French ‘autompne’, which, in turn, stems from the Latin ‘autumnus’, the American said, “STOP! Let’s just call it Fall. Leaves fell down already”. 

Dear USA, why are men fresh when they enter college? They are not a fruit. Clearly, whoever came up with the word is a sophomore, both wise (’sophos’) and foolish (’moros’).

Thanks to English Lite, Hollywood, Microsoft Windows and Taylor Swift, English became lingua franca of the world. Today, English holds a monopoly on knowledge, especially in the sciences. From Python to SQL, the language of computer coding is nothing but broken English. Python is basically English with most of its grammar replaced by math. 

If language = ‘English’:
print(“Hello World”)
else
print(“Go to Hell”)

Further, English is deeply entrenched as the international language of business, finance, and technology. Money talks! Want money? Speak in English. Or should I say, ask in English. English is the weapon of choice in company boardrooms. Your success is dependent on leveraging synergies of made-up acronyms like ROI, EBITDA and KPIs to complicate the most basic information. 

Finally, almost everything nice and important is in English, except maybe K pop. If you do not know English, you are missing out, you get left behind. About 30 percent of internet is in English. The rest is on WhatsApp. 

Well, one must wonder: Is it not easier if everyone speaks the same first language? There is no definitive answer to this. But Bob, a linguistics expert, answers this with a definitive yes. Because Bob is Bob. Bob is an expert at giving opinions. Here is what he had to say about this matter: “The real question is not if we should have a universal language. The real question is, which one?” Thank you Bob for answering my question with a difficult question. Bob spend seventeen years of his life in Central Asia and Southern America learning about native ethnic languages. He now knows thirty -seven new words and none of them were during my interview. I wish he did. It would’ve made great content for my article.

Since Bob was useless, let me answer this question myself. Here are my two cents that I spent to research for this article. There is two definitive ways to go about this: One, ask everyone to learn the most common language, which could either be Mandarin or English depending on how you define it. The problem is everybody says their language is the greatest, including the British. Bob says English should be everyone’s language since he does not want to learn any new language at his age. He is not entirely wrong but English has words like chai tea (tea tea), soviet union (union union), lake Tahoe (lake lake) and sharia law (law law). So, can we even take it seriously? Right, let’s just shelve this option. Two, encourage everyone to learn three languages of their choice, with the hope that they will discover common ground with every other speaking person on the planet. If they don’t, ask google. 

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