A Dreadful Language?

So I started taking an ESL endorsement (English as a Second Language.) The endorsement is an intensive program through Weber State University, and essentially, it is meant to instill good teaching practices so that teachers may better help students who are English Language Learners (which we have a lot of in Utah!)
Anyway, I have been putting off getting this endorsement for three years now. One excuse after another (I’m going to Europe, sorry. I’m pregnant and feeling sick, sorry. I’m on maternity leave, sorry!) Those are all valid excuses, but mostly, I did not want to give up two weeks of my precious summer with Dave, and this year, with my Isaac! I decided, however, that I better just buck up and get this done! I finished the very time consuming 80 hours (two weeks) of class yesterday, and am happy to report that it isn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I will be in class every Wednesday night until next April finishing up the remaining 12 credit hours. After I got my Master’s degree a few years ago, I was sure that I’d never have to go back to school (at least a university setting,) so now that I am, I feel a little crabby about it, and a bit resentful that I am spending my time doing this. However, I am sure I will take plenty away from this class that will be helpful, and I will be glad that I did it after I am done!
I learned some interesting things about language acquisition, but my favorite class was phonology and syntax. Did you know we are born knowing, and using over 300 sounds, but as we develop language we narrow those down drastically? Those of us that are born into the English language narrow the sounds down to 44. It’s different across languages/cultures, but I find that pretty amazing. I never put much thought into the whole concepts of accents, until this class. Obviously, when we speak another language, we can’t hear our own accent. I didn’t realize though, that it had to do with not hearing the difference in sounds. For instance, Japanese often will pronounce the initial “s” sound of a word using a “sh,” so instead of saying seat, they would say sheet. If you were to say sheet and seat to them, they would not hear the difference. Interesting, I say! This is just one of thousands of examples. Did you know that most languages have 5 vowel sounds total. English has 14 vowels sounds, making it one of the most difficult languages to learn to speak, not to mention READ (see below!!)
Here is a poem from a letter published in the London Sunday Times in 1965. I think it sums it up!

A Dreadful Language?

I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, laugh and through.
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps?

Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird,
And dead: it’s said like bed, not bead—
For goodness’ sake don’t call it ‘deed’!
Watch out for meat and great and threat
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt).

A moth is not a moth in mother
Nor both in brother, broth in brother,
And here is not a match for there,
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear,
And then there’s dose and rose and lose—
Just look them up – and goose and choose,
And cork and work and card and ward,
And font and front and word and sword,
And do and go and thwart and cart—
Come, come, I’ve hardly made a start!
A dreadful language? Man alive!
I’d mastered it when I was five!