'The English Language Is Definitely Strange'

The spoken genus I know best, almost exclusively, is English, species american. I lazily dabbled as a student in Latin and German; from a former girlfriend I absorbed un peu de French; and living in Houston, paying even half-attention, you learn a useful glossary of Spanish, mostly nouns, often from signs on businesses: abogado. In Kraków ten years ago the Poles supplied me with plenty of opportunities to say “Dziękuję!” 

If I have to be monolingual, I’m glad it’s with English. Unlike a lot of people, I don’t distrust the profligacy of our language. I find exhilarating the ease with which we can say almost anything in so many different ways, though as writers we strive to find the most precise, most concise, sometimes the most colorful way to say it. Redundancy is built into English, probably because it was born of two language groups. Here is a poem, “Spoken English,” by J.S. Venit, a poet I don’t otherwise know:

 

“Did I say doldrums when I really meant

dungeons instead? I wish I could say I was

a graphic designer living in the Everglades

or a Phantom searching for a mate or that

you are now closing the window on another

cloister. But the English language is definitely

strange. Sheep graze in flocks but geese also

migrate that way while cattle come and go

in herds but wolves in packs thieves in bands

and minnows swim in schools like nearly all

the other fish except for sharks while barbarians

wreak havoc in hordes locusts in swarms and

tourists in droves or loads like coal or hay. Little

wonder we are bewildered and wear scarfs at

night and scarf down our unloved vegetables for

dinner while scoundrels come in bunches as do

grapes and oysters spend their days asleep in

beds barely silent according to the latest research

with a troubling proclivity for interrupted dreams.”

 

I assume the absence of commas is purposeful, to suggest the blurring of so many shared meanings. Yes, English is strange but it’s also great fun. Some of Venit’s words might be classified as terms of venery, or collective nouns. Poets ought to know that a group of capons is a muse, and a capon is a castrated rooster.