The English language has come from all over.  English is the melting pot of the world languages. Many of your most common words came from various different contributors.  The English isles were dominated an ruled over by a great number of people including Latin (Romans) and Greek, French, Viking, and the Anglo-Saxon. Each group of people that have in some way  influenced England, and therefore have also influenced English.

What is a melting pot? Then official definition is pot in which metals or other substances are melted or fused. Just as America is a place where tons of people are thrown together, the same goes for the English language.  English has had many people throw their own parts into it.  This is the reason for the myriad of different spelling and grammar usages in English. Each culture has left their fingerprint on the modern English language. All of this has created the mutable, versatile, and adaptable language we speak today.

To see a few examples of English’s ease of adaptability, one has only to look at the words they use the most often.  Words like champagne, etcetera, resume, Suzuki, Honda, and of course Toyota are all borrowed words that are part of another language and instead of coming up with a  Anglicized version of the word.

To illustrate the problems of such oddities I give you the following design or play thing.

GHOTI

How do you pronounce it?

It is pronounced fish.

How? Impossible you say! The fine elements of our messed up language shows through to show you how: language

          – /gh/ as in enough

          – /o/ as in women

          – /ti/ as in nation

This was created by a Linguistics professor to show the oddities of our English language and to ask why we don’t go to a uniform way of spelling.  The answer:  The English language adapts, therefore it must adapt to all.  Once it is put into a box of exact spellings and sounds, it will loose its adaptability- Oxford English Dictionary committee 1926

You could also say that our language is like a pot-luck, where everyone brings something to eat, so that there are 20 dishes rather than just one to choose from. Just as in a pot-luck, English has a lot of different varieties available to choose from, and thereby makes it a more inviting way of communicating. Common sayings that have creaped into our everyday speech like  “Yo Quiero taco bell” that comes from our North American neighbors to the south or spelling constructions like  “I before e except after C” which was given to us by the Dutch settlers.  These strengths of Malleability, Adaptability, Evolving, and Universality is what has pushed the English spoken language into becoming the first world language. A  large nod in that direction is the fact that the FAA(Federal Aviation Administration) will only allow English spoken over the airline radios.  It is the official language of all the airlines and airports worldwide.  Therefore, if a Chinese pilot and an Italian pilot arrive over France, they will all be speaking the same language: English.

A few more oddities just for the fun:

• tomb does not equal bomb
• dumb is not equal to bum
• lord does not equal sword, but does equal sword
• heart, beard, heard
• how does not equal low
• daughter does not equal laughter
• vicar does not equal cigar
• ballet does not equal wallet
• enamor rhymes with hammer
• mirage does not equal age
• fury does not equal bury but does equal jury-did at one time
• mint does not equal pint
• dull does not equal bull
• heave does not equal heaven
• what does not rhyme with rut but with squat