Complexity of the English Language

Language is a God-given gift. It exists due to the communication that has to be made possible. One of which is the English language. As noted by Derek Walcott, “The English language is nobody's special property. It is the property of the imagination: it is the property of the language itself.” Hence, with the characteristics of creativity and dynamicity of languages, there comes the idea of how one would properly adopt, acquire, and use the language to convey ideas, thoughts, and feelings.

For years of studying the English language, I would definitely say that it is driving me crazy. It isn’t as simple as combining letters to form words, nor connecting subject to predicate in order to form a sentence. It goes beyond that. There are indeed lots of considerations to take note in using the language correctly in context. One has to be fully aware and knowledgeable of the rules that govern the formation of words and sentences.  This task would then be a lot difficult for second language users.

With all the important points that speakers of the language has to learn, English language is also taken as a subject in school especially for non-native speakers. A number of years would be allocated in learning the grammatical rules and developing the four macro-skills such as listening, reading, writing, and speaking. It has been said that learning how to use a language in speaking comes immediately faster than writing. This is evidently true because the environment plays a vital role in language acquisition aside from the fact that there is a universal grammar by Noam Chomsky that govern the language acquisition process. The outside factors like the people in the environment and their language usage contributed to the way a learner mimic or copy a certain language. Speaking a language is easier to do since it comes spontaneously and it only involves giving and receiving information from receiver and sender. Whereas, in writing, one has to be keen enough to observe the appropriate characters to use in forming words and follow the grammatical rules on how to properly convey ideas in correct and felicitous way. The output of writing is prone to criticism since it is easier to check if some ideas are grammatically ill or ambiguous.  Therefore, it would take a long time and a process to be fluent enough in writing a language even if speaking has been learned in earlier stage.

The English language entails being familiar with the grammatical rules. But sometimes, these set of rules aren’t so consistent since there are some which are deviated, but are accepted and dubbed as an “exemption to the rule”, like in the case of some rules in subject-verb agreement.  Redundancy or repetitions are prohibited in the English language, however some statements though not grammatically correct because of redundancy, are accepted and used in context. Knowing all these biases in the system of the English language, there is a so-called “poetic license” that would validate the deviation from what is conventionally accepted as appropriate.

In spite of the craziness that is caused by the English language to its users, it’s still a subject for study that drives everyone eager to know more about its nature. Known as a language of prestige and power, the English language has emerged as a standardized and universal language which would equipped one to be globally competitive.