What a strange Language we have…

What a strange language we have… I have undying respect for anyone who learns “English” as a second language.I can speak some Spanish, that is until we get into “future tense”. At that point Spanish’s famous reliability vis a vis conjugation of verbs, breaks down and “gets weird”. But they have nothing on “us”. For example: An “Apology” might be a statement of contrition, or a defense of one. Or a “Bill” might be a payment, an invoice for payment, something you find in your wallet, and it’s “green”, or something that comes out of Congress that might result in a law. “Bolt” could be a decision to flee, or a way to secure something as in “Bolt the door”. Similarly, “Bound” might be an indication of a destination, or someone or something that is tied up or tied own Weird. Another one that is close is “Cleave” which either means to split (as in a log), or to cling to as in hug. Then, there’s “Consult”, which might be “me” seeking advice; or offering it. And one of my favorites in light of current events…”Congress” could be read as the opposite of “Progress”.
Forget the weird spellings and conjugations that often trip up ESL folks, there is stuff like “would, should and could” which are all fine, so long as you don’t delve any further but the next step in working with these words turns up: “will, ought to, and can”. And lets not forget the ever famous “would and wood”, which sound exactly alike but are not related at all. Scholars can forensically delve into the derivations of most of our words but this is not relevant for the recent émigré from wherever immersed in the language, desperately treading water and trying not to “drown”. The simple fact is that we have all this weirdness because English has a tendency to “steal” from everyone else; “cherry-picking” the really evocative or cool words that work and dovetailing them into day-to-day parlance.
We have words like “Custom”, which means a common practice, or a special order. This is also where the word/concept “customer” came from- as in “the customer is always right” which, having worked in retail a lot more than I would like to contemplate, you don’t hear so much anymore which is good, because in my experience, the customer is frequently not right. Apparently the use of “custom” goes all the way back to Latin, then French…From whom the “English “adopted” it and we have tweaked it and adopted it yet again and there are subtle but potentially important differences from “English, English, to American English”. One only needs to scratch the surface of that British/American “relationship” to bump up against words that are not carried over wholesale: Torch/ Flashlight, Knickers/Underpants, Lift/ Elevator…and so on.
“Clip”, might mean to fasten, detach, or proceed at high speed. No wonder recent arrivals seem to feel like their head is spinning. Even people who have studied English (the Lingua Franka of the modern world!), are adrift for a while because proper English and what’s spoken in day to day interchanges can vary wildly. I remember as a recent arrival to SoCal, looooong ago, I went up to a food truck and in my Castillan accented Spanish (which was what I was taught in HS), ordered coffee with sugar. I eventually got my café’ con sucar, but not without looks from the presumably Mexican guys in the truck giving me the hairy eyeball …”Who does he think he is talking like that?!”

Another thing that baffles is “humor”. It is native to the culture and it is often based on exaggerations and lies, which makes “humor” difficult for someone new to the language to navigate, leaving them thinking: “He just told me a lie and now his face says that he is expecting me to laugh…WTF?” I remember running a very large photo studio in Hollywood. We shot cars and that’s why the workspace needed to be large. Cars are much bigger than a toaster. Anyway, we had a small Japanese company that sublet the upstairs loft (who also did advertising photography (for Japan). They often used our shoot space when we weren’t working that day. One day the (Japanese) boss and his main assistant were screwing around (in our studio) with a set of golf clubs, some golf balls a net, (to catch the balls) and a video camera. They would drive the ball (another word with multiple meanings!) then watch the replay on the camera and laugh uproariously at each other’s bad form. I walked by on an errand of some sort and off handedly remarked: “Wow, you guys are having too much fun!” And the looks I got clearly said: “How can there be too much of a thing called fun. I’m confused!” These guys spoke very good English, but hadn’t mastered humor/irony etc. yet. I would be so much worse, were I plopped down in another culture. I am not criticizing those guys…It takes forever to “get” humor in another culture. Maybe someday some will devise a “fix” for that… Oh yes “Fix”: to repair, fasten…or to castrate. Yes, English is an interesting language. Simply consider the word “fix” and you’ll have it in a “nutshell”.