iRant: This language I love

I'm proud of the fact that I've stayed away from this rant for so long, simply because it is without a doubt the most f'ing annoying subject in my life at any one time. Every reminder, launches me into a fury that is perfectly replicated every. Single. Time.

I can't help it, I know it seems strange to be able to positively identify a flaw but then continue to perfectly replicate it time and time again, in fact you'd be forgiven for considering it 'retarded' because in short...it is. Fortunately I'm not asking for your understanding...I'd just like you to hear me out.


Let there be no misunderstanding here, I'm not suggesting this rant is in anyway exclusive, its not a new line of thought or in any way a break through. I'm sure it has been acknowledged before... For you to fully see where I'm coming from with this rant I'll need you to take a journey with me...back to my school days!

-Back Ground-

Simple Simon is simple, has always been, however Simple Simon...tries very hard to analyse the details because he knows he's 'simple'. Due to this attention to details I was decent at school, not overly studious (short attention span) but when I put my mind to it, I produced results.



-Scene 1 act 1-
Setting - Secondary school, Set 2 English class Yr 10 (tenth grade). Simple Simon sits at the back of the class.

Teacher: "Class, today we are not going to read from any books, or reconstruct any poems or text. I thought we'll have an improv day...I'll start on a subject area and we'll see where we end up.

Class: "Yeeeeeessss!" [begin to get a little rowdy]

Teacher: "OK class calm down, lets start with this, a quick fire spelling test, I'll call a person and tell them to spell a word. It will be easy words, no pressure its just for fun." "Martin spell 'Castor'"

Martin stands up and says "C.A.S.T.O.R"

Teacher: "Very good" "Spencer spell 'Spill'"

Spencer stands up and says "S.P.I.L.L"

Teacher: "Excellent! Simon spell 'Knife'"

Now before I continue I have to let you know, that I did it on purpose. [Right continue]

I stand up and say "N.I.F.E", everyone in the class goes quiet and there is one child in the middle row who can't help but laugh out loud. The teacher quickly says

Teacher: "Ruben stop laughing, its an easy mistake to make. Simon, you have made a mistake, care to try the word again?"

I said "Sure Miss, N.I.F.E. I didn't spell the word incorrectly thats how its supposed to be spelt."

Teacher: "Now now Simon, you know the word is K.N.I.F.E, there is a silent 'K'"

She should never had said that!

Simon: "Miss about this silent 'K' what is the point in it, if its silent why bother putting it into the spelling, I mean imagine how many people have spelt a word correctly only to be told its incorrect because of some silent letter that has no presence in the verbal morality, I mean its not as if we spell each word we utter... so whats the point?"

Now as you can imagine the teacher is stunned, that kid that thought my spelling was funny is now silenced and the classroom has now turned into my army...

Teacher: "Simon, just because something does not announce its presence or stand out so you take heed of it, does not mean it does not exist or you shouldn't respect it. Take gravity or air for example, you've never seen either of those before, yet you respect their existence"

Can anyone say "Power Shift!". My army all turned and looked to see what comeback I would issue to such an eloquent display of reasoning. I won't put up a front she would have won many battles with that one submission, but she made a fatal mistake...she brought Science to an English lesson and Science is about the details ... what is Simple Simon good with?

So I say: "Miss, you make a very valid point with regards to 'something' not having to announce its presence in order to be respected or acknowledged and on that point I concede, however, gravity and air have very discrete ways of letting you know when they are 'not' present, namely you float up without gravity and you can't breath without air. So in a funny way if your on the ground and your breathing, they have both respectively announced their presence... This is where the silent letter fiasco falls flat on its face, because there is no rhyme, reason or rule for when a silent letter is to be utilised. I mean, I could literally say my name is to be spelt P.s.y.m.o.n and every time you spell it S.i.m.o.n I would be well within my rights to tell you your wrong...it just doesn't make any sense. Whats worst Miss, is we have always been taught that if a word is difficult to spell we should try to spell it phonetically, the word 'Phonetic' is a rouse in itself because my immediate attempt at spelling it would be F.O.N.E.T.I.C. How do we know that we shouldn't use phonetics for words with silent letters, better still how are we supposed to know a word has a silent letter if its silent? Miss, way back in history I'm sure the spoken word came before the written, so it stands to reason that words written would have been phonetically identical to the spoken version, so where or when did the inclusion of all this silent letter mockery occur?"

Remember that power shift I mentioned earlier? Completely neutralised.

The rest of the class looked to the teacher for answers she could not provide. About a week later I was moved to Set 1 English...I'm not quite sure why...

Looking back on that episode and knowing what I know now (I actually know some teachers) I must have been a difficult pupil. I say that because teachers teach a syllabus and the syllabus is often f@&%rey, the teachers have little to do with the origin of the content, they are just the masters of the delivery, much like Milli Vanilli in the late 80's/90's.

So fast forward a couple decades and we now have a boundless dictionary, some smart alec tried to claim we had over a 1million words to the English language back in June 2009. The response to the claim was mixed and it wasn't decided either way, although I take comfort in the following quote

The Vocabulary of a widely diffused and highly cultivated living language is not a fixed quantity circumscribed by definite limits... there is absolutely no defining line in any direction: the circle of the English language has a well-defined centre but no discernible circumference.

Now in plain English, the above quote just means, 'We know where English started, but it has no perceived end'. This is both an interesting and dangerous concept (the danger only comes for the connoisseurs of language). Languages outside of English were bounded, that is, they had a finite number of words that made up their diction. This has its advantages and disadvantages in my opinion.

Advantages

1. The language would potentially be less open to extremely broad interpretations (written)
2. Words could possibly be more meaningful....?
3. There is a high probability that the mockery that is the 'silent' letter would not exist.


Disadvantages

1. Language could be less expressive
2. Concepts explored by the use of extensive vocab could be less likely [not sure about this one]
3. We could lose amusing institutions such as sarcasm

Whether good or bad, there is one thing that is definitely true and that is, the growth of the English language has forced the grow of others. In some cases its been a brute force attack, example:

Words/vehicles such as Car and Aeroplane have only been in wide circulation in the last 100 years. At introduction they would have been available to a select few, but gradually over time and as they became more affordable they were pushed to the masses.

So take your mind to a small village in Africa, the villagers have seen these Aeroplanes flying overhead, they've never been in one, they have never seen one up close, but they guess it must have someone controlling it. They have no real name for it, because generally speaking 'transport' is a finite term that is proceeded by a type e.g air transport, land transport, sea transport. For the African language in question this is not an issue, after all, its transport that is in the air on the ground or on the sea. However these terms will not satisfy English, simply because:

Hot air balloons
Blimps
Aeroplanes
Helicopters
Fighter Jets

are all modes of air transport but have very different methods of completing the same task ('ish' work with me here).

Anyway, as time progresses and the reality of the plane that used to fly over the village comes closer to home (relatives coming from far on planes), the language could quite possibly need to include the new terms above, the problem is, there are no literal translations for the terms and so they get added to the language as is..and hence the language of the village/nation has grown by 5 'new' types of air transport. Multiply this by every 'new' invention made and you potentially have a language littered with words that have no real place/meaning in the language they are being used in. Face it, air transport is air transport, its literally transport that travels in the air, the intricacies are not necessary (IMO).

The danger with this is, English is becoming a widely spoken language worldwide and with this, increasing numbers of youth are not learning their mother tongue or are not learning it properly. Thus bringing about the death of languages, that is not that the language doesn't exist anymore, but the number of fluent speakers is dwindling...


And so to come full circle, why the heck do we have silent letters in words!?! My simple brain cannot justify it....aaarrrrgggggghhhh it annoys me so much, if I had it my way:

Knife = Nife
Cycle = Si-kul
Psycho = Si-co
Elephant = Elefant
xylophone = Zi-lofone

Done...simple.


As if the silent letter saga wasn't enough you also have words that sound the same but are spelt differently:

Might, mite.
Light, lite.
Weight, wait.
Waste, waist.

How are you to know which is right and when? (Imagine you were new to the language)

Oh this language I love...