I think what I like about the English language is that it’s just so ridiculously difficult. For example, did you know that the word “set” has 430 definitions which take 60,000 words to detail in the full Oxford English Dictionary? I mean, that’s just silly. It’s amazing to me that languages like Cantonese or Mandarin, with thousands of characters representing individual words and single words with multiple meanings depending on emphasis and nuance, are still generally considered easier to learn than English. Take your two parts English history, with it’s Germanic and Norman influences, grind in your Greek and Roman roots, and then mix in the Empire’s habit of usurping words as well as territory along its travels, and you’ve got yourself one tasty language cocktail. Of course, as far as I’m concerned (not all that far really), the same aspects that make English so difficult to deal with are what makes it such a versatile, beautiful and fun language.
Take this fun little tidbit that a friend of mine (the intrepid Doggy, I believe) had as his email signature a while back:
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.
Surprisingly, that works out as a grammatically correct, albeit baffling, English sentence. Let’s dig in:
You have to start with the plural of Buffalo being the same as the singular, the benefit being that you don’t need an article (a/an/the) to introduce a plural.
Then you’ve got three definitions of buffalo:
1) Buffalo – the city in New York state, famous for its wings, and probably other stuff as well.
2) [...]