Why is English grammar so complex?

One of the main reasons why English is so difficult is because of the many contradictions it has. First, words like hamburger has no ham in it and pineapple has no pine. Also, the past tense of teach is taught but the past tense of preach is preached not praught.

Why is English such a flexible language?

English is very relaxed when it comes to evolving which has allowed the language to be very flexible. This helps keeps it modern and relevant and helps spread its influence. This flexibility means English is able to adapt very quickly to cultural and social changes.

Is English grammar flexible?

English Words Are Often Flexible The flexibility and homonymy of English words is pervasive: words like yesterday, today, and tomorrow can be nouns or adverbs. Words are pressed into service for new functions all the time and the list of such grammatical doubles goes on and on.

Does English have complex grammar?

Glossary of Grammatical and Rhetorical Terms The complex sentence is conventionally regarded as one of the four basic sentence structures in English. The other structures are the simple sentence, the compound sentence, and the compound-complex sentence.

Why are old languages so complicated?

Originally Answered: Why are many ancient languages so complicated compared to many modern languages? As languages age they tend to simplify their grammar and syntax (losing genders, cases, tenses and variation of the beginnings and ends of words), to shorten words and to turn common phrases into single words.

Why is English vocabulary so large?

English was originally a Germanic language, related to Dutch and German, and it shares much of its grammar and basic vocabulary with those languages. Consequently, English has a much larger vocabulary than either the Germanic languages or the members of the Romance language family to which French belongs.

Why did ancient languages have such a complex grammar?

So basically the “complex” grammar of ancient languages evolved from a state where single words were extensively modified and aggregated in order to convey complex meanings instead of synthesizing sentences with prescribed structure. The common unit of an utterance became a sentence rather than a noun or nominal phrase.

Why is English grammar so difficult?

Below are five perfectly good, rational reasons that explain why English grammar is difficult. Any errors in grammar are unintentional and not meant to be ironic. #1- The rules are nitpicky. English grammar has some really strict rules.

Do languages that are simple inflectionally compensated by having more complex syntax?

However, the idea that languages that are simple inflectionally “compensate” by having more complex syntax is as far as I know not particularly well-supported, either theoretically or empirically. (If anyone does know of a compelling argument for this hypothesis, please let me know—I am certainly not an expert.)

Is it possible to speak an inflectionally complex language today?

As Atamiri pointed out, there are languages spoken in the present day that have systems of inflection that look as complicated, or more so, than the ancient Latin systems of inflection. So it does not seem to be impossible for ordinary people to speak inflectionally complex languages in the present day.