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In the article “English is not normal” written by McWhorter (n.d.), the emphasis is placed on the fact that people who either speak English for their whole life or learn it from scratch rarely ponder the oddity of it. It concerns both grammatical and lexical peculiarities behind the lingua franca. Hence, the first oddity associated with English is the fact that there is no language remotely similar to English a person might partially understand because of their English fluency. Second, English is one of the few languages that does not possess any gender-specific articles or inflections. Furthermore, English is the only language that specifically requires a third-person singular ending with no inflections in other persons.
The authors explain such an oddity by tracing the history of our language back to the existence and development of Old English that was quite similar to German. However, the modifications introduced by various settlements within England have made the language sound nothing like its older Germanic counterpart. The languages that contributed to the modification of English included Celtic, Old Norse, French, and Latin. While such contributions as Old Norse interpretation seemed to make the language “easier,” multiple borrowings from French and Latin resulted in complex etymology and the emergence of more “sophisticated” versions of the inherently English words.
Indeed, the present structural and lexical plurality peculiar to English is inspired by the multiplicity of options borrowed from different languages’ linguistic traditions. The scholar concludes by saying that the deep peculiarity of the English language primarily derives from its “outrageous history” (McWhorter, n.d., para. 35). Such a conclusion drawn from the research perfectly defines the oddity behind the English language. The most peculiar part of the article, in my opinion, is the fact how English tends to differentiate between less and more academic and sophisticated language.
The latter, for its part, is mostly produced with the help of French and Latin counterparts of English words. Indeed, while writing this summary, I subconsciously opted for more complex French and Latin borrowings in order to meet the expectations for a more formal outline. The fact of using Latin “concludes” instead of “ends” or “winds up” supports the claims of English oddity, with the word “odd” originating from Old Norse. Hence, it may be concluded that John McWhorter presented a series of valuable insights into the comprehension of the origins and patterns of the English language.
Reference
McWhorter, J. (n.d.). English is not normal. Get Pocket. Web.
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