Quote Originally Posted by fetishdj View Post
English is one of the most contradictory and strangest languages in existence in terms of grammar. Quite often the rules do not make sense because it has been garnered from several sources over the years and in a way that was actually illogical because the original scholars who compiled the rules in the 17th century made certain assumptions. The main one they made was that English was a Latinate/Romantic language when really it is a Latinate/Germanic hybrid being derived from both Anglo-saxon and Norman French roots. An example of this is the use of the words Pig and Pork and Cow and Beef to describe the animal and the food that comes from it.
Dear fetishdj,

English is indeed a mongrel child, but it has agility to present ideas that other languages are hard pressed to follow. When searching for the illogical try some eastern language sentence structure.
While the Etiology of certain words can be fascinating the melding of grammar from at least four sources yielded an amazingly fluid and (dare I say) logical set of principles. English is perhaps closest to its Germanic /Flemish roots in vocabulary but without the constraints of a conservative sentence structure. That very flexibility may be the cause of much confusion for people learning it as a second language, but it is a prize worth protecting, even if we do need to learn a few extra rules.

Just the passing ramblings of a

Mad Lews