PrayToShinji wrote:Ok, imagine correcting someone on english but not understanding that english is a broken language. Guys, I love commas, they make my world go round. Tell me why english isn't a broken language.
English is not a broken language because there are millions of people across the world -- 1,500 million, with only 375 million being native speakers -- who manage to learn the rules and use it effectively.
English is the language Shakespeare, Chaucer, J.K. Rowling, Ian Fleming, Chinua Achebe, and Charlotte Bronte wrote in -- writers who are very widely read even hundreds of years after their deaths, in some cases. The English of the King James version of the Bible is some of the most beautiful and lyrical -- shall we even say naughty -- language there is:
Cant.7
[1] How beautiful are thy feet with shoes, O prince's daughter! the joints of thy thighs are like jewels, the work of the hands of a cunning workman.
[2] Thy navel is like a round goblet, which wanteth not liquor: thy belly is like an heap of wheat set about with lilies.
[3] Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins.
[4] Thy neck is as a tower of ivory; thine eyes like the fishpools in Heshbon, by the gate of Bath-rabbim: thy nose is as the tower of Lebanon which looketh toward Damascus.
[5] Thine head upon thee is like Carmel, and the hair of thine head like purple; the king is held in the galleries.
[6] How fair and how pleasant art thou, O love, for delights!
[7] This thy stature is like to a palm tree, and thy breasts to clusters of grapes.
[8] I said, I will go up to the palm tree, I will take hold of the boughs thereof: now also thy breasts shall be as clusters of the vine, and the smell of thy nose like apples;
[9] And the roof of thy mouth like the best wine for my beloved, that goeth down sweetly, causing the lips of those that are asleep to speak.
[10] I am my beloved's, and his desire is toward me.
[11] Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the field; let us lodge in the villages.
[12] Let us get up early to the vineyards; let us see if the vine flourish, whether the tender grape appear, and the pomegranates bud forth: there will I give thee my loves.
[13] The mandrakes give a smell, and at our gates are all manner of pleasant fruits, new and old, which I have laid up for thee, O my beloved. -- Song of Solomon
Those who call it broken while not capitalizing "english' as a proper noun, those who say they love commas and then abuse them with reckless abandon, those who intersperse their posts with 'lol's to fill the gaps in their arguments, those who do not understand that paragraphing is a simple enough prospect: that different ideas require new paragraphs.... yea, verily, I say unto you, that it is not English that is broken but your grasp of the rules of English.
However, despite the beauty of the language and its proliferation across the world over the centuries, it does possess a number of irregularities (as do other languages). Some cite its difficulty in learning the rules as its proof of being 'broken'; Mandarin with its tonality and pictograms might arguably be quite a bit more difficult, yet no one claims it is broken
What do you think? Is English a broken language? Why or why not?
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