A few weeks ago I wrote about the differences between British English and American English. It made me think about language and the origins of words that we use every day. English is a difficult language to learn.
In Finland and Korea for example words are pronounced as they are written. As a result, literacy levels in those countries are very high. In English we have to deal with silent letters in words, such as ‘psychology’ where the ‘p’ is silent, or we have to deal with inconsistencies in how we pronounce words.
Think about words that contain ‘ ough’, now say out loud the following words and notice how inconsistent the pronunciation of ough is: thought; tough; cough; though and through. In my teaching I deal with quite a few foreign students from China, the Philippines, India etc. I’m always in awe at their ability to cope with studying for a higher degree in a language that is not their mother tongue and which is so lacking in consistency.
To understand why English is so complex we need to understand some basic history of how our lands were invaded over time. Most European languages, including English, adopted and adapted Latin. The Roman Empire stretched far and wide, though stopped at the border with Scotland.
But over time we were invaded by various tribes from the Anglo-Saxons, from whom we inherited Old English in the fifth century, to the Vikings in the eighth century who gifted us old Norse. Then there were the Normans who imposed French as our offic.