In Praise of the English Language: Part One

One of my favorite authors of all time is Bill Bryson. I first met Bill through his wonderful book "The Mother Tongue: English, and How It Got That Way." It is an enlightening and often hilarious romp through the journey of English, but most of all, it's a love song for language. It's long overdue, but thought I'd hum a few bars myself over the next couple of posts. And while I'll never write as cleverly (and with the same zeal for research either: I'm terribly lazy) as Bill, this blog is free and you have to pay $11.20 to buy Bill new.

English is robust, incredibly intricate, unpredictable yet insufferably demanding, and totally rebellious. Can you name even ONE spelling rule that doesn't have at least one exception, if not three or more? It produces hot-blooded grammar mavens who will, at the merest hint of confusion over a "who" versus "whom" construction, whip her copy of Strunk and White's "Elements of Style" under your nose so fast you could skip shaving the next day.

However, there is a softer, fluid, egalitarian side to this language that endears it to me even more than its usage and spelling eccentricities appeal to my own inner grammar maven. (And yes, she's there lurking in the shadows, waiting to pounce and spank the moment I accidentally write "two" instead of "too" in an email.) It is the enthusiastically responsive, dynamic nature of the language that I cherish. The shape and flavor of it flows like a tide, filling in empty tidal pools in unpredictable washes, while the next wave sees it stripping clean an entire shoreline of untidy linguistic flotsam and cigarette butts, leaving a pristine slate of "write your message here" shimmering sand.

If it were a country, it would take every UN honor for harboring all who sought a toe-hold on her shores: technology adoptees, commercial branding opportunists, whisper-thin refugees from have-not languages, neologisms, culturally-specific usages, air traffic control phrases, hilarious deep-Texas country music lyrics.... Come on in, all y'all.

I love how it refuses to be "owned" by any one nation. It makes itself comfortably native the moment it hits a new continent. (And if you want living proof that every tribe on the planet handles it uniquely in every aspect from spelling to pronunciation to usage to how they exclaim derision or emphasize a point, just come and hang out in any break room in a high tech company in Silicon Valley.)

Stay tuned: I'm gonna rant about dictionaries and spelling irritations soon. I just wanted to plant my emotional flag on this particular hill before I got too snarky about the details. And I can't find my copy of "The Mother Tongue," so if I loaned it to you, will you please give it back?