Canis Mordit Homo

 

 

It is commonly admitted that as one grows older there are fewer things with which one is totally satisfied. This is what gives rise to the myth of crotchety ol' folks. But let me admit right now that I am superbly satisfied with the fact that I have been speaking the English language in one fashion or another since I was about two years old. What I am satisfied with is that it was English and not Chippewa, Navajo, Hawaiian, Chinese or, please God, not Latin.

Looking just at the phonics of the language, we have speech that is very rich in sounds. Hawaiians must make do with a full range of only twelve sounds to express themselves. They don't have other sounds in their language. Most languages have 25 or 26 sounds they differentiate. English has 42 allowable sounds in the language. Several American Indian languages have more sounds than English with about 45 phonic units. For instance several of the American Indian languages make a distinction in their language between the explosive sound of "p" at the beginning of "pit" and the much softer sound of "p" at the end of "tip".

Sound aside, I am delighted that when I talk I don't have to remember 30 different word endings for my nouns, adjectives and pronouns. Latin for instance has five cases (nominative, genitive, accusative, dative, and one I can't remember), three genders (masculine, feminine, neuter) and two numbers (singular and plural) and every noun ends differently depending on its case, gender and number. That is 5X3X2=30 different noun endings and the additional burden of remembering that every adjective and pronoun also must agree with its noun in ending. English only distinguishes two cases (nominative and genitive) and the only change to the word is the addition of "s" or " 's" to the word. We got a bird nest on the ground there.

So with all its crazy spelling and pronunciation (so, sew, sow) and its many shades of meaning for one word I'm glad that I learned English (kinda) as my native tongue and that I don't have to remember that "Canis mordit hominem" means "dog bites man" while "canem mordit homo" means "man bites dog".

Reading Robert Claiborne's great book "Our Marvelous Native Tongue" was very helpful in bringing me to this conclusion.