English: The Wild West of Languages
Have I been gone for an exceedingly long time? Yes. Am I making my triumphant return with probably the stupidest post I will ever make on this blog? You bet your ass I am.
Let’s talk about the dumpster fire that is: the English language.
We’ve all heard the jokes, seen the memes, and pulled our hair out while trying to finish an essay that’s due at midnight and you started at 11:15 that night (definitely not speaking from experience). When I tell people that I have a degree in English Language and Literature, I get a lot of variations of the same response:
“How the hell did you do that?” AKA: “So, you’re telling me that you’re insane. Got it.”
Much of that initial revulsion comes from English’s (well-deserved) reputation. Bow and bow don’t rhyme, but bow and though do. Bow and bough rhyme, but bough and though don’t. ‘Queue’ is just the first letter followed by four silent ones. Though, through, thorough, trough, and throughout are all very different words and don’t sound the same. The plural of goose is geese but the plural of moose is moose. Fish AND fishes are both plural forms of the singular fish.
In short, it’s utter mayhem out here.
I am far from a linguistics expert, but the short explanation of why English is one of the most confusing languages out there is that it is a mish-mash of rules and colloquialisms patched together from other languages (see: Latin, French, and Indigenous languages, just to name a few). I think this internet quote from someone much funnier than I am says it best: English is just three other languages stacked on top of each other in a trench coat. The confusing, nonsensical, contradictory rules of the English language are only going to get more convoluted as time goes on; assigning new ironic meanings to words changes them over time, slang terms are adopted into the official dictionary, phrases are misused so often that they’re no longer misused. All languages evolve, and English is no different.
But why are we talking about this? Why is it important?"
Well, it’s not really. Not in the sense that I’m making any groundbreaking conclusions with this caffeine-fueled blog post.
As a writer, one of the common traits I’ve reliably found amongst other writers is that we all hate writing. I know, that doesn’t make a lot of sense. But it’s true. Writing evokes a love-hate relationship with the craft— you want to get your story out there, but the medium (English) is just so damn frustrating to work with. A “cottage in the forest” is cute and whimsical, but a “cabin in the woods” is spooky and ominous even though their literal meanings are the same. Similar examples include “butt dial” vs “booty call” and too many sexual innuendos to list. Learning the concrete rules of the language, namely grammar, sentence structure, and verb tenses, is only the first step to fully grasping English. As indicated in this blog post infographic, you must first learn the rules and then you must break them.
Strategically, of course.
When you’re just starting to learn to write (and for clarity, I’m talking about creative writing here, not in terms of learning English as a second language or for professional/technical writing) the first thing you’ll do is, rightfully, learn the rules. What’s an adjective, an adverb, a preposition, an allegory, a juxtaposition, etc.? Once you’ve got a good grasp of the technical do’s and don'ts, that’s when things get hairy and difficult to explain.
“I was told I’m not supposed to end a sentence with a preposition.”
“Yeah, I know. Forget about that, but only for this scenario. You might need to follow the rule in the next paragraph.”
“Why?”
shrug
“How do you know when you’re supposed to break the rules and when to follow them?”
double shrug
Selectively following English rules is a skill that mainly comes from experience. If you ask me to edit a piece of writing for you, and I suggest a change to a sentence that is grammatically correct but I switch the wording around a little bit, most of the time I won’t be able to elaborate on the choice beyond “it just sounds better this way.” This is annoying feedback to receive as a new writer, I get it. You want to know why it sounds better when there was nothing technically incorrect about the original sentence. Unfortunately, I can’t really give it to you. I mean, I could, in the abstract sense. I could say “well, this word has three syllables and this one has two, and this one has a double consonant but this one has mostly vowels, so breaking them up makes the sentence flow better,” but to be honest, I’d be bullshitting you. Sure, some of that stuff might play into why the sentence sounds better a certain way, but I can promise you I’m not thinking about that when I’m writing or editing. I read the sentence and if it sounds awkward to me, I switch words around until it doesn’t anymore. I mentioned ‘flow’ in my half-assed explanation above, and that’s really the keyword. It’s also the one that’s the most difficult to tamp down into a workable definition.
‘Flow’ is the ultimate goal for any writer, and it’s the reason you’ll sometimes break well-established grammatical rules. Why did you start your sentence with ‘because’ when you’re not supposed to? Because it flows better. See what I did there?
Your flow as a writer is going to be different than mine. Flow and style go hand in hand, although they’re not the same thing. Two writers can have a similar style, but the flow of their writing is different. Two writers can also have a similar flow to their prose, but their style is completely different. They work together to create your identity as a writer, but they are separate pieces and are equally important. You should dedicate time to finding both (and yes, it will take time).
Let’s take me for example. I’ve been told that I have a poetic style of writing. So, what does that mean?
In this case, the style and flow overlap quite a bit. By ‘poetic,’ most people mean that I use descriptive language in a strategic pattern (flow) that evokes poetic imagery (style). Think of ‘flow’ like the water in a stream, and ‘style’ like the shape of the stream itself. You can change each element individually (a wide stream with a harsh current, a narrow stream with a leisurely current, or vice versa) but the two need to work together. They are both required to make the stream whole.
Is the stream analogy helping? Honestly, I’m winging this. Trying to explain to people how I write and how I develop my writing is difficult, but I’ve given it a lot of thought over the years and this is what I’ve come up with.
At the end of the day, the English language is a tool for writers. You can use the tool how it’s intended to be used by following the technical rules you learned in high school— on second thought, don’t use those ones. Most of them are wrong. Use the ones you learned in college, they’re more accurate.
You can also use the tool in unconventional ways. For the first two weeks after moving into our first house, I was using a door knob plate as a mini pry bar. It’s not stupid if it works.
It’s really easy to get overwhelmed when you’re trying to cram a lifetime’s worth of knowledge and experience into your first draft. My advice to you, and the best advice you can implement, is to be kind to yourself. Be patient, don’t overthink it. I’ve been writing for almost 20 years, and do you think I know everything? Do you think I’ve memorized every rule and can recite them by heart? Do you think I remember what a verb conjugation is by definition? Hell no. I look back on things I wrote as recently as last year and I see a thousand things I’ve improved on, a hundred things I would do differently, and maybe ten things I still like. Writing is an ever-changing, ever-evolving skill that you will always be working on as long as you continue to practice.
Don’t give up, and don’t be afraid to try.
