Lexophiles

Lexophiles, how's that for a word? It means lovers of words; and, that's me alright. As an ESL teacher I find myself ever more intrigued by the language. Some of the rules make no sense whatsoever. Why do we have to change from I am, to you are, to s/he is? Who came up with that? All those "theys" in the  world that set out to obstruct our way.

Let's look at the past tense of the verbs. Why are some regular, add -ed, and some irregular: go-went, buy-bought, sing-sang? Then we have verbs that don't change: hurt, cost, quit have only one form; why? Who designed this? It's craziness. I read that all new verbs will be regular. For example, I texted you. I surfed the net for hours etc. And isn't that funny how a noun so quickly becomes a verb? As in Google; "I Googled it yesterday."

Then there's pronunciation, what a headache for new learners. Think of a word like read, in the past, it's spelled the same, but pronounced like the word red. Some words change their pronunciation according to the part of speech it takes. For example, live; "I live on the corner." Or, "It's Saturday Night Live!" Same with object; as a noun, "He's the object of my affection." As a verb, "I object!"

I've read that as English is becoming more and more the Lingua Franca for business around the world, that the language is now, and will keep on, changing to the point that there won't be a past tense form at all. As in: "Yesterday, I go to the beach." will be understood because of the word yesterday; forget changing the tense.

I really wonder what English will look like in 100 years?

For any other Lexophiles, check out the file under OF INTEREST  that is titled Lexophiles. It's all funny plays on words (puns), example: "The dentist and the manicurist fought tooth and nail." Hah, some funny stuff.