November 2001

This brings up my topic of discussion for today. The English language is messed up. It goes beyond the mere homonym and allophone thing, where you have words with same spellings and different meanings, or same sounds but different meanings. Then you have synonyms, different spellings but the same meaning. What really proves to me that the English language is messed is that we use transliterations of foreign words for any hard concepts. Like somehow Latin or Greek are better languages than English.

Now, while I'm not doubting the veracity of that suggestion, I'm also very amused at my own writing, at this moment. Just looking back at my own sentences, I see the heavy number of Latinate and Greek words, and just want to bang my head off this desk.

It's not just the fact that English is a language lacking in identity, either. I mean, beyond the Latin, the Greek, the French, and the Danish influences on English, I hear there's actually two or three English words still in the language. "Bad" for instance. And you thought that was a mere title to a Michael Jackson album.

But really, what I most complain about with regards to English is the lack of an organized grammatical system. Most languages make sense. You use different sets of endings, and then word order isn't so important. You can always figure out what goes where. English is kind so not practitioners its to.

I feel kind of like Yoda saying that, but you get what I mean. I like Greek and Hebrew. Those are good ol' languages. Those languages are stylin'. This English thing is just messed. I think I'm going to write next month's Just Add in French, simply in protest. But we'll see what happens when we get there.

(checking his word count)

Yeah, I think this will do for this month. Remember to brush after every meal, and floss when possible.