Ask Sue-belinda

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I RECEIVED an email from Arjun in which he told me that English is a weird language. Unlike most of us Arjun speaks many languages – six in fact – but tells me that learning English was by far the hardest.

Well Arjun, English is hard because it was just chugging away developing slowly and demonstrating a kind of logic in its growth that was at least comprehensible, but then the Age of Sail occurred and the English suddenly developed the most amazing wanderlust! (I should point out here that ‘wanderlust’ is not actually an English word. Back in 1902, we borrowed it from the Germans and liked it so much we never returned it. Before you do a very English thing and apologise, the Germans have borrowed a few words of ours too, but none is more apt and amusing than their appropriation of the word ‘handy’, which is the name they have chosen to give their mobile phone.) The English got on board and set sail for adventure and language!

While exploring, they managed to fit in a safari or two – safari is an Arabic word used to describe an expedition in which the local fauna is observed in its natural habitat. Some possibly enjoyed a cigar, a word which they borrowed from their some-time mortal enemy the Spanish. (The Spanish never felt the same way about the

English after Princess Catherine of Aragon, daughter to King Ferdinand II and his consort Isabella I of Castile, was married to Henry VIII.

He married her after his brother Arthur, her first husband, died. Eventually she was dismissed and divorced by Henry VIII – it could have been much worse – so that Henry VIII might marry

Anne Boleyn.) Back to cigar, yes, English borrowed it from Spanish ‘cigarro’, but don’t feel too bad, the Spanish borrowed it from the

Mayans who smoked ‘sicars’. Of course the Mayans were repaid for their generosity when the Spanish gave them smallpox, measles, influenza, bubonic plague, diphtheria, typhus, cholera, scarlet fever and a range of sexually transmitted diseases as well. Nice. It was important on long sea voyages to stay healthy with citrus fruits, so they possibly took lemons, which we’d swiped from the Arabic language where it was happily a ‘laimun’ – for good measure, they also swiped orange, which was quietly enjoying its Arabic life as a ‘naranj’ – yes, that’s right, we misheard ‘a naranj’ and made it ‘an orange’. Even when we borrow, we sometimes get it wrong! Just like the monks did when transcribing ‘a shoal of fish’ into ‘a school of fish’.

We know the English made it all the way to China, after all, they had a war called the Boxer Rebellion whose origins were very complex and worthy of more reading (over to you). They borrowed a lot of things while in China, but I’ll bet you did not know they also borrowed the word ‘ketchup’, which comes from a Chinese word ‘kestiap’, which they misheard. It was a wonderful joining of pickled fish and spices to make a great sauce. Sadly, it’s now a term applied to tomato sauce – hardly exciting for the old tastebuds at all!

Yes, the English were quite the entrepreneurs (a 13th century word borrowed from the French verb ‘entreprendre’, which meant simply to undertake an action of some sort). The English were importing all manner of wonderful things to eat, to look at and to enjoy in a myriad of ways. Pretty soon savvy (from the French ‘savior’ meaning ‘to know’) businessmen were putting together comprehensive catalogues (also French, but they borrowed it from the Ancient Greeks ‘katalogos’) of their wares.

By now, the English had moved into the southern hemisphere. Here they found penguins (from the Welsh ‘pen gwyn’ meaning a ‘white head), wonderful little swimming, but flightless birds unknown in the northern hemisphere.

At this stage of the game they were quite possibly a bit tense and in need of a massage and yes, you’ve got it, borrowed from Portuguese where it began life as ‘massa’ meaning ‘dough’, then on to ‘amassar’ meaning ‘to knead’ and thence into English where it meant kneading the muscles to release tension.

Of course, they could have waited until the late 20th century for computers to be used, so that they could have sent an avatar on their journey of discovery and stayed at home safe and sound in their slippers and pyjamas. Yes indeed, avatar is borrowed from Sanskrit where it meant a representation of oneself – not as a technological representation, but as a smokescreen in which we present ourselves as other than we are. (The best exemplar I can think of here is the old ‘telephone voice’ – in the days before caller ID, we answered the phone without knowing who was on the other end – amazing right? – so we used our best voice: ‘Good afternoon, you’ve reached the Smith Family, how may I help you?’ This was quickly forgotten when your friend identified himself and the call proceeded in a much less formal manner.)

There we go, one reason English is a little weird is because we’ve borrowed it from around 48 modern languages and at least two ancient ones.

It’s also a little weird because it’s huge! No, it’s not just big, it’s mammoth with over 2.5 billion words in the Oxford English Corpus. Now let’s put that in perspective – in the French dictionary equivalent are around 135,000 words, while in Russian there are 130,000, there are 1,100,373 in Korean (north and south dialects), 500,000 in Italian and so on. English is like a very big child as it’s young and still growing. A new word is created about every 98 minutes, which is around 4,000 new words each year!

Of course over 50 countries use English as their official language, but they are growing their versions of the language too and at varying rates. Don’t worry, the average person only has an active vocabulary – words they use and/or recognise – of around 50,000 words.

I love this language. You’ll get the hang of it Arjun, after all, millions of young children speak it.