How Can Anyone Learn English?

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Having studied three foreign languages (Spanish, German and Hindi), and managed to stumble along at the barest rudimentary level in all three of them, I remain astounded that people can master a language as complicated as English. English has so many exceptions, contradictions and idiosyncrasies, it would be a nightmare to learn.

Anyone who's tried to learn a second language knows that one of the hardest things to master are the "irregular" verbs. You have to memorize rather than conjugate them. But English not only has hundreds and hundreds of irregular verbs, we also have hundreds of "irregular" nouns.

English singular and plural words should make more sense than they do, but they don't . How do foreigners learn these exceptions? It amazes me. There is cat and cats, dog and dogs, goose and geese, and mouse and mice. But then there's moose and moose, and deer and deer.

English even has hundreds and hundreds of "irregular" pronunciations. We say bar, car and tar, but we say "war" differently. We say cart and part a certain way, but we say "wart" differently. Why? Just because we do. For some reason, honk and wonk rhyme, but the word "monk" rhymes with punk and chunk.

Not only does English seem impossible for a foreigner to master, we English-speaking Americans don't even know all the rules. Take the simple, everyday verb "to lie," for example, as in "I'm going to lie down in bed." Most of us say, incorrectly, I'm going to "lay down," which would be grammatically correct if we were referring to laying bricks.

Also, we haven't the faintest idea of the proper declension. It is supposed to go like this: Today I lie in bed, yesterday I lay in bed, in the past I have lain in bed. Try using that last one with people ("I've lain in bed for as long 12 hours") and all you're going to do is make them angry.

In fact, the proper declension for "to drink" (drink, drank, drunk) has proven so confoundingly difficult for us native-born English speakers to master, we had to throw in the towel and allow ourselves to use the past tense ("drank") when it didn't fit.

Instead of being required to say, "In the past I have drunk as many as four Cokes at one sitting," we are now permitted to substitute the improper "drank" for "drunk," presumably because the latter suggests being inebriated and makes us uncomfortable. Still, uncomfortable or not, it's wrong. It's like being allowed to say, "In the past I have spoke to him," instead of the proper "spoken" to him.

When I lived in India, my competence in Hindi never rose above that of a sullen 3-year old child, which, considering that my in-country hosts could speak perfect Hindi, Punjabi and English, was a disgrace. Even though India had been ruled by Britain, and English was a second language, I marveled at their mastery of it. How could they master such a complicated language, along with Hindi and Punjabi?

Also, besides speaking beautiful, idiomatic English, some of these Indians were so hip to American culture, they knew that Rhode Island wasn't an island, that there was no ham in a hamburger, and that a car's glove compartment contained everything except gloves. They knew that "cord" rhymed with "sword," but that "word" rhymed with "herd." They knew everything.

Alas, the only occasion where I was able to demonstrate that my mastery of English surpassed their own was when I assured them that "turd" was spelled with a "u" and not an "e." It was a minor victory, but I rejoiced in it. -- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.












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