English is a ‘fun’ language.

Do you notice anything interesting about ‘Abstemious’?

ABSTEMIOUS. That’s right. Abstemious, which means indulging only moderately in food and drink (as per the Oxford dictionary), has all the vowels slotted in sequential order. So has FACETIOUS. Facetious means treating serious issues with inappropriate humour.

English is often dubbed a “funny” language, albeit sarcastically, due to the peculiar pronunciations several of its words have been subjected to.

‘To’is pronounced as ‘Two’ while ‘Go’ is pronounced as ‘gO’.

There is no denying that English with all its quirk scan be frustrating at times, but I have always found it more fun than ‘funny’. There is a deluge of entertainment lying unchartered under its wings: an entertainment so potent that it drove a mad man to contribute to the making of one of the finest dictionaries in the world.

Yes, you read it right! Oxford English Dictionary (OED) wouldn’t have been possible had it not received contributions from the prolific Dr W.C. Minor, who, while imprisoned in a lunatic asylum, consistently sent material to the chief editor of OED, Sir James Murray. The relationship between the two men has been captured beautifully by Simon Winchester in his masterpiece, The Professor and the Mad Man.

The fun, however, is not confined to words alone. There is a truckload with in the precincts of punctuation. Read through the following story:

A husband, really angry with his wife, posted a note on the front door which read:

“A woman without her man is nothing.”

A smart kid was passing by, and he thought of mischief. He took out his pen and scribbled something on the note. Now, the note read:

“A woman: without her, man is nothing”.

The wife came home and gave her husband a big hug.

That’s the power of punctuation in English. It can ruin or preserve the language and, in some cases, relationships as well. Lynn Truss, in her book, Eats Shoots and Leaves, explains this power in an engaging manner. The book starts with a Panda joke which drives home the point beautifully. Read it here.

Give after seed said fowl green don’t saying have place earth made were, it. Lesser, face in there, moveth unto. Set so bring fowl made which. Give the were and. Itself won’t may you’re, void. Grass. Signs moveth rule beast fish Sea, own bring.

Trivia time:

1.English is the most widely spoken language in the planet’s history.

2.One in every seven human beings can speak or read it.

3.Half of the world’s books are written in English.

4.Over 75% of international e-mails are written in English.

Such affection for a language that has been mimicked from all quarters of the world! Spell-binding, isn’t it? The spell, though, becomes a bit of a pain when you have to explain the following to an inquisitive first-grader:

1.Today we speak, but first, we spoke. Then how come today, faucets leak, but they neverloke?

2.Today we write, but once we wrote. How come, then, we bite our tongues, but we neverbote?

3.How come there is no egg in eggplant?

4.How can noses run and feet smell?

5.The plural of tooth is teeth, but the plural of choose is not cheese.

This befuddlement that can drive some crazy is also, to a certain extent, responsible for making the language so challenging and thus so endearing. The charm also comes from the fact that English, since its inception, has been like a welcoming host that receives words from a whole lot of languages and makes them a part of her family.

Look up Samosa in a dictionary, and you will understand.

References used:

1.Online Oxford Dictionaries.

2.www.englishclub.com

3.www.squidoo.com/eccentricities-of-english

4.Richard Lederer, Crazy English, Pocket Books, New York, 1989, pp.117-118.