Made For Poetry

The majesty and grandeur of the English language: it's the greatest possession we have. The noblest thoughts that ever flowed through the hearts of men are contained in its extraordinary, imaginative, and musical mixtures of sounds.

Also sprach Higgins, and I am inclined to agree. Yes, deeply noble thoughts have been expressed in Latin, Greek, German, and who knows how many other languages, but that's not the point of the thing, even in the above line (spoken by Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady, in case you're not familiar with it). The sound of English is unusual, its agility extraordinary. There is nothing else like it.

Unusual people are generally made by way of an unusual childhood, and the same goes for the English language. Though part of the Germanic family, it resembles its relatives only in general bone structure and a few basic - and thus unchanging - features. I'm tempted to go into a lot of detail about its truly remarkable history, but I'll spare you (for now) and sum it up in an explanation that looks like a metaphor:

I once read that each culture has a particular "genius" about it, and the genius of England is being invaded. Everyone invades England at some point, it seems. The curious thing is that after a couple generations, the invaders have become English. It's an exaggeration, since the process usually takes longer than that, but by the third generation after invasion, the process is very well underway. Eventually they get absorbed entirely, merely another flavor in the pot. That even goes for the Angles from whom England and its language got their name. America has inherited a certain amount of this ability, but the British Isles do it very well.

This same thing happens with the language itself. A joke that resurfaces periodically is that while most languages borrow words, English mugs other languages in dark alleys and goes through their pockets for loose grammar. What really happens is pretty much what happens culturally in England: outside influences are adapted and folded into the overarching tongue, which, thus enriched, goes on its merry way. Because of this (and several things like the Great Vowel Shift, which I won't get into now), English doesn't much resemble even Dutch, its closest relative. If you go back just to the Middle English of Chaucer, though, the similarities begin to show through. A recent episode of Sleepy Hollow included some very nicely done Middle English, if you want to hear it in practice.

What comes of all this? English has become a language with a naturally interesting sound (if it's your native language, hearing the Middle English gives an idea of how this sounds to a fresh ear) that can adopt a variety of musicalities, both in sounds and tonal patterns, with ease. Its grammar is flexible enough to allow presentation of facts in almost any order without confusion, and can even modify the clarity of the facts at will. The set of tenses available to the verbs is more thorough and specific than any other I am aware of, with the ability to convey mind-bogglingly precise combinations of time and continuation. One phrase can tell you that, at a point in the future, a particular action will be ongoing, and had started before that point but in the future from the speaker's point of view. And native speakers do it without realizing what complexity they invoke.

On top of all this, the borrowed words, which swell English to by far the largest language on the planet, let a speaker or writer choose exactly what is wanted. An author can choose the sound of a word, its implications and nuance, and then decide whether to repeat a word or choose a synonym.

My native language may be an international conglomerate of words and ideas with a strange history, but the net effect is so interesting and flexible that it seems to have been designed for poetry.