The English Language

My daughter works in insurance, and her company policy decrees that all outgoing mail must be proof-read before sending.

She was given some mail written by a Chinese colleague, and noticed that the girl had finished an email with the words, 'Ta ta'. She pointed out that such an informal term should not be used in a business mail.

The girl was surprised. "Doesn't it mean 'Many thanks'?" she asked. "I know 'ta' means thanks, so I thought ..."

And you know - her logic is impeccable!

Isn't English wonderful?

Its beautiful chaos is far better than the unchanging structure of a codified language.

Don't knock codified languages, this site is built using one of them...

I can well understand why the girl may think as she does. They (who ever they are) say that English is one of the most difficult languages to learn. We have words that make no sense. For example the word "lead." Now did I just say lead (as in lead a horse) or lead (like in it is made of lead). There are many other examples which would confuse anyone. Then there is that darn punctuation, with all the rules that most of us never paid much attention to in school but now have to try and recall it so we can write stories. Is English wonderful....I think the jury is still out on that question.

But can you have a conversation in it? Express a feeling? Nay, structured languages are too restricted for real growth. If I recall correctly it took almost ten years for the French to come up with an "approved name" for the space shuttle - and that language still has its equivalents of thees and thous.

Give me freely evolving English any day.

Goodgulf

Hear, hear Goodgulf, I reckon canadianspankee likes to have a bit of "sport" now and then on this forum and it`s all harmless fun, I hope.

We all know how weird and wacky the English language can be, words that sound the same but mean different things such as There and Their, Were and Wear and words which have more than one meaning such as bill, spill, till, will and so on and so forth and it`s very easy to pick holes in the language but there`s really no need for a jury at all. English rules -get over it !

Depends how you define conversation.

Note to those reading this thread: as often happens here, it will soon devolve into a discussion of whose beer is better, and/or why Pink can't stop eating crisps..

Cal33

Your claim is far from true! The highly intelligent contributors to this forum have much better things to talk about then mere beer (by the way Canadian beer is much better then the rest anyway, that is why I barely mention it). and Pink's consumption of crisps is a matter for the concerned folks to discuss the benefits found in eating of health food. I am shocked you would even think that this forum is ever used for anything besides the most intellectual conversations.

Plus Pink is too busy, having done ten validations already today, to eat crisps...