Rant on the English Language

July 16th, 2003

No wonder the typical English as a second language student is so perplexed. English is by far the most confusing language ever created. We have words that have completely different meaning but are spelled the same. Being an American I didn't really realize these nuances until I started to examine our language. Were you aware that tear (cry) and tear (to pull apart or into pieces by force) are the same word? When we see them in a sentence we just give a particular word meaning in the context of that particular string of words. What would a sentence like "The paper-cut that I received by ripping the paper in half resulted in a tear". Is that irony? Where did the concept of irony come from anyways? Something being ironic is the laziest way for an individual to describe a passage; Irony is the most overused premonition in literature. Irony is said by some to be when the exact opposite of what you expect to happen occurs. I don't know about you but I don't sit around all day everyday looking into future expectations nor am I a mind reader. Therefore everything in my life could be considered ironic. Me writing this could be considered ironic because maybe I didn't expect to even wake up this morning. Some things that are perceived to be ironic go against the definition anyways. For example from the highly acclaimed Alanis Morrisette song Ironic "It's like rain on your wedding day". I don't know about you but if I was as miserable as Alanis appears to be in her lyrics I would EXPECT rain on my wedding day. That would the common expectation of a pessimist. Therefore it wouldn't be ironic at all; actually I could argue that it would be ironic for someone to think that was ironic, but I'm not going to get into that. Why do we have words that constantly change in meaning. Last time I checked dog was referring to something that went woof woof and no I'm not talking about Arsineo Hall.

There will be more to come on this later so stay tuned,

Matthew Stanford

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