As a person without background in linguistics,Why Is This a Question: Everything About the Origins and Oddities of Language You Never Thought to Ask by Paul Anthony Jones was the first book I picked up, and it did not disappoint. The intriguing title drew me in, and the content kept me captivated. Who wouldn’t be curious about why the letter “i” has a dot, the origins of vowels and consonants, or why the alphabet is arranged in its specific order? These seemingly trivial questions are actually crucial to understanding linguistics, and Jones addresses them in a fascinating way.
Jones doesn’t just provide straightforward answers to the intriguing questions that serve as chapter titles. Instead, he begins each chapter with a historical perspective, tracing the evolution of language over time, making this book as a great starting point for those looking to understand the complexity of this seemingly simple yet critical subject. He skillfully combines linguistic evidence with findings from archaeology and anthropology. Jones also demonstrates how our linguistic history is interconnected with fields such as arithmetic and psychology. This approach allows readers to follow the journey of early language speakers across Europe to the northern and eastern shores of the Black Sea, where their language first emerged around 6500 years ago.
Despite its thoroughness, I believe there is much more to explore in the world of linguistics beyond what is presented in this book. Nevertheless, Why is This a Question? is an excellent introduction to the field, providing readers with a solid foundation and inspiring further exploration.
Below is a summary of what I found most interesting in this book.
Summary
What is the hardest language to learn?
The difficulty of learning a language is highly subjective and depends on various factors that differ from person to person. Factors such as age and natural aptitude for languages play significant roles in this variability. Thus, it is impossible to definitively label one language as the hardest or easiest to learn, as the experience will vary for each individual.
From the perspective of an English speaker, the U.S. Foreign Service Institute categorizes seventy of the world’s languages into four levels of difficulty based on the time it takes for diplomatic staff to achieve ‘professional working proficiency’:
- Category 1: Languages closely related to English, such as Dutch, French, and Swedish.
- Category 2: Languages with more complex grammar, like German.
- Category 3: Languages such as Czech, Polish, Finnish, Icelandic, Hebrew, Vietnamese, Urdu, Mongolian, and Armenian.
- Category 4: Languages that are considered the most challenging, including Arabic, Cantonese, Mandarin, and Japanese.
This classification helps to understand the relative difficulty for English speakers but acknowledges that individual experiences will vary widely.
Why Do We Say ‘Eleven’ and ‘Twelve’ Instead of ‘One-Teen’ and ‘Two-Teen’?
The question of why we say ‘eleven’ and ‘twelve’ instead of ‘one-teen’ and ‘two-teen’—and why we use terms like ‘thirteen’ and ‘fourteen’ instead of names meaning ‘three-left’ and ‘four-left’—is more about our understanding of numbers than about etymology.
English operates on a base-10 number system, meaning we are predisposed to think in sets of ten. However, the existence of non-decimal number systems worldwide suggests that an ancestor of English may have used a base-12 counting system. Mathematically, twelve is more versatile than ten, as a set of twelve can be divided in more ways (into 2 sets of 6, 3 sets of 4, 4 sets of 3, or 6 sets of 2), compared to ten, which can only be divided into 2 sets of 5 or 5 sets of 2.
Historically, a base-10 system has been the norm in English and its Germanic and Proto-Indo-European roots. Despite this, the practicality of twelve as a divisible number is evident in measures like 12 inches in a foot, 12 old pence in a shilling, and 24 carats in pure gold.
The distinct names ‘eleven’ and ‘twelve’ emerged because these numbers were frequently used independently, seen as part of a practical set of twelve rather than the beginning of a new set of ten. It is our current decimal-based viewpoint that makes these names appear unusual.
Why do we capitalise I?
The capitalization of ‘I’ is not due to a psychological or egocentric reason, as this practice is unique to English. Instead, there is a more practical explanation for this convention.
One theory suggests that because ‘I’ frequently appears at the beginning of sentences, it naturally became capitalized throughout the language. This makes sense, as ‘I’ is a subject pronoun, unlike ‘me,’ which is an object pronoun and rarely found at the start of a sentence.
The most likely explanation, however, dates back to the Middle English period when significant phonological changes were occurring. During this time, the Old English pronoun ‘ic’ (pronounced somewhat like ‘itch’ without the ‘t’) was simplified to a single short ‘i’ sound. In handwritten documents, a lowercase ‘i’ could easily be overlooked or misread as a smudge or flourish. To avoid this, scribes began writing ‘i’ larger, making it more noticeable in cramped texts.
As the distinction between uppercase and lowercase letters became more established, this slightly larger ‘i’ evolved into the capital ‘I’ we use today. Therefore, the capitalization of ‘I’ is a result of the natural progression towards simpler forms in the English language and the development of uppercase and lowercase letters. It is not due to egotism or a gap in grammatical rules.
My Favorite Bits
Before we began drawing lines and borders around ourselves, the concept of a national language simply did not exist.
Paul Anthony Jones, Why Is This a Question: Everything About the Origins and Oddities of Language You Never Thought to Ask.
Author: Paul Anthony Jones
Publication date: 1 December 2022
Number of pages: 320 pages
