While we celebrate the richness of English vocabulary, we also often complain about its weird spelling rules (or the many exceptions to those rules). However, compared to some other languages around the world, English speakers actually have a pretty easy time of it. When you look at the word formation, grammatical construction, and spelling options of a few languages in particular, you might be glad you’ve chosen to work on improving your English instead of diving into those difficult languages. And if you’re a native speaker of one of them, congratulations! Learning new English vocabulary should be a piece of cake, a walk in the park, a breeze – except for all the strange idioms, of course.

A recent article in The Economist illustrates some of the twists your tongue must take in order to accurately pronounce many world languages, as well as some of the grammatical complexity not found in English. In addition, the article says, English really isn’t that difficult even in terms of spelling; it’s “a relatively simple language, absurdly spelled.” It’s true that in English you’ll find sets of words like though, grow, toe, soul, and coast that all use different combinations of letters to represent the sound OH (the “long O” sound), but this situation also occurs in many European languages. However, English doesn’t have what those languages often do, which is a set of diacritical marks (or “accent marks”) that are added on top, underneath, or through letters to change their pronunciation. We might be tired of dealing with the number of ways that five vowels can be combined to form sounds, but at least we only have five – think of French, which has those five vowels, but also four accent marks that can be applied to each, multiplying the possibilities far beyond the wildest nightmares of the English speller!

Keep working on learning new English vocabulary words, and the proper spelling of each of those words, and you’ll find it’s all much simpler in the end than you dreamed.

Cross-posted at the Ultimate Spelling blog.