English is a stupid language

English is a very stupid language.

But more pertinent is the fact that those who had such a stupid language to learn as their mother tongue were able to overcame nearly all their major habitat handicaps, crossed the daunting oceans, nearly circumvented the globe and established and empire on which the Sun never set.

Of course, they were clever people who, in many ways, were - and continue to remain - stupid and muddled; people entangled and trapped in their own invention - the English language; people, for ever so busy in search of the right word that they seldom have any time left to have the right thought.

English is less a language, more a Band-Aided potpourri of diverse patois, that, in its formal structure, ends up more recondite, obfuscatory and exclusionary, the more it tries to be accurate and precise. As a communicational tool, it is like a wild horse that challenges taming. To call is a ‘ language’ of current global trade and commerce is to admit that it is less an international language, more an international harlot. It is like that law of global finance. Bad money chasing the good money out of the market.

If human speech could be analogized to the states of matter, then some languages, Sanskrit, for instance, have a solid crystalline structure; elegant and uplifting patters of sounds that reach out to express that which is beyond expression.

Others are amorphous and powdery; they have speech patterns that seldom allow anyone to deviate or digress into new territory other than set in the past; the Arabic languages could probably make good illustrations of these. Then there are languages that are like liquids with various degrees of viscosity - languages with engaging rhythms and cadences, French and Bengali, and perhaps, those spoken amongst the Mongol people - Mandarin, Tagalong, Cambodian come to mind.

The folk languages are simple, like cascading streams and gurgling brooks. They usually have rich oral content. Many are without their own scripts. Most are spoken in relatively small regions. Humankind is, per the experts who keep track of these things, will lose most of them before this century is over.

Then there are languages - and English is a spectacular example - which are volatile like gas; lots of volume but little content; hardly any memory informs them. Like a shifty character, they are always borrowing from Paul to pay Peter. To keep alive they have to constantly reinvent themselves. Their grammar is unacceptably defective and their scripts are usually plagiarized. Of inattentive minds, they make miasmic cesspools that bubble with resentment, discontent, anger, greed and aggression. They can, however, can spread like a forest fire burning whatever touches them - heritage, tradition, culture, history, feelings and emotions that belong to communities that are meek and would rather live in peace and contentment.

But those few, who are blessed - the saints and the poets - can take whatever sounds are available to them and create a form of language that is charged like plasma. Their thoughts arc out in all directions and their words defeat mortality. It is a miracle that they are able to immunize their insights from the deformations that are the lot of all thought that is expressed.