English - A satirical Language Review (written in English)
Introduction
Hello there linguistics enthusiasts, in this newsletter article, I will be reviewing the English Language and giving it a score based on a few criteria: phonology (sound), orthography (writing), grammar, history and genetics, mutual intelligibility with other languages, usefulness to learn, and quality of native speakers. The score is out of 5, and it will be based on a weighted average of each category with the following weights:
Usefulness to learn: 1
Phonology: 2
Orthography: 2
Grammar: 2
Mutual intelligibility with other languages: 3
Quality of native speakers: 3
History and genetics: 4
We will be referring to the Received Pronunciation accent, which comes from the south of England, where english originated.
Phonology and Orthography
As most languages, the writing and pronunciation are very much linked. The English orthography uses an alphabet system, with 26 symbols representing vowels and consonants. The symbols used in the alphabet are: a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, q, r, s, t, u, v, w, x, y, and z. The English language is notoriously difficult with orthography and phonology because a single sound can be written in multiple different ways, and a single way of writing something can produce different sounds depending on the word, sometimes even in the same word. The most notorious example of this is the word ending -ough has as few as 10 different ways of being pronounced! The former comes from the fact that English loaned words from many different languages, bringing with them their spellings and a bastardisation of their pronunciations.
These represent 5 or 6 vowels and 20 or 21 consonants, depending on how they are defined. Despite only 5 or 6 symbols for vowels, English has a total of 20 vowels, including 13 monophthongs and 7 diphthongs (and 5 additional triphthongs whigh are not shown). These vowels are: /ɪ/, /iː/, /ʊ/, /uː/, /ɔː/, /e/, /ɛː/, /ə/, /ɜː/, /ʌ/, /ɒ/, /æ/, /ɑː/, /eɪ/, /aɪ/, /ɔɪ/, /aʊ/, /əʊ/, /ɪə/, and /ʊə/. The sheer amount of vowels comes from the fact that English is a Germanic Language. Additionally, there are 22 consonants in standard received pronunciation, being written using 20 or 21 symbols. These consonants are: /m/, /n/, /ŋ/, /p/, /t/, /tʃ/, /k/, /b/, /d/, /dʒ/, /g/, /f/, /θ/, /s/, /ʃ/, /h/, /v/, /ð/, /z/, /ʒ/, /l/, /r/, /j/, and /w/. These are a very standard mix of consonants, however there are some special things to note. Standard English doesn’t have the very common post-alveolar tap or trill present in almost every other European language to some extent. It does however have dental fricatives, which do not appear in many European languages. English also has syllabic consonants, namely /l̩/, /m̩/, and /n̩/ which appear at the end of words such as bottle, rhythm, and button.
In phonology, English gets a 3, because of the interesting sounds only in English and a few other neighbouring languages, but a clear lack of other sounds. As for orthography, English will receive a 0. With exactly double the amount of sounds as there are symbols to write them with, it’s no wonder that so many people have tried to reform the spelling of this bastard tongue, and yet so many have failed.
Grammar:
English grammar is quite simple. It follows an SVO word order, has 2 grammatical cases in nouns, and 3 tenses in verbs. Compared to the mess that is the orthography, and the mess that is the related German, English grammar is quite sound, and for that reason will get a solid 4.
History and Genetics:
English is an old language, with its first appearance happening in the British Isles around the 5th century CE, as a bastardisation of multiple Germanic languages, with borrowing from native Celtic languages. It then picked up loan words from Norse invaders of the 8th century, and loan words of Latin and French origin from further Norman invaders of the 11th Century. Although English is a Germanic Language, a majority of its vocabulary does not originate in Germanic Languages, due to this Norman invasion and subsequent borrowings for the scientific and other academic fields. Modern English did not appear until about a millennium after Old English started appearing, in the 15th century. This is when colonialism started, and the English language and its creoles spread across the world to the extent that it is a global language today, wiping out native languages (and peoples) in the process. The language as we know today has undergone so many changes that, even with using a modern pronunciation (impossible due to the orthography), the old language is unrecognisable by modern speakers. This is unlike other European languages, such as Greek, which although the current written language has a history of almost 3000 years, a lot of Ancient Greek is understandable to modern Greek speakers. Due to the history of English being interesting from a mainland European perspective, I am tempted to give it a 5, but it loses out because of its influence in erasing so many other languages due to the English colonisation programme. For History and Genetics, English receives a 2.5.
Mutual intelligibility:
To put it frankly, English is terrible at being close to other languages. The closest non-creole language to English is Scots, although many say it is a dialect of English. After that, genetically it is Frysian, although it is easier to converse with a speaker of Frysian using Old English than Modern English. The next closest language to English is Afrikaans, and they do not share enough mutual intelligibility for English to receive anywhere near enough credit. For this, English must unfortunately receive a 0.5, only because it is cool that you can use Old English to talk to people and those people aren’t even English. Most English people can’t even conversate between themselves because their accents are so different.
Usefulness to learn:
As mentioned in the History section, English is a global language, with the most speakers of any language on Earth including non-native speakers. The influence of English in other languages is also something to look at, with many people code-switching between their native language and English in casual conversation, even when noone in the conversation has English as their native language. English must then get a 5 in this regard.
Quality of Native Speakers:
English people. 0.
Final Remarks:
Overall, English is one interesting language, being a bastardisation of many other languages put together. The total weighted score is 30.5/85. This gives English a final rating of 1.8/5. Very close to a passing grade of 2.75/5. Looks like being interesting is not enough to be considered a good enough language.
Investigations of personal biases and preferences:
An investigation of the author, Samantha Limnatiti, was commissioned by the commissioner of Internal Affairs and found there to be no substantial evidence of bias or preference.
