The Nature of the English Language
English is a varied language that has absorbed vocabulary from many languages of the world. English is the most dynamic language in the world. Let us discuss the nature of the English language.
1. Receptive
Receptiveness is regarded as an extraordinary nature of the English language. It has maintained its open-door policy. It has adopted and accepted thousands of words from European, Asian, African, Indian, Japanese, Chinese and other languages. We can see a great impact of classical languages like Latin, Greek, Arabic, French and Sanskrit on English. English has the richest vocabulary due to its receptiveness (Kumari, 2014).
2. Heterogeneous
As English contains vocabulary from many languages, It has become heterogeneous in nature. In the process of adopting words from other languages, in some cases, the original words as it is without change in meaning, but in some other cases, the spelling, pronunciation and meaning of original words from other languages were changed for instance; the French word, "tour" and the Latin word, 'turns' become 'Tower' in English (Kumari, 2014).
3. Systematic
The system of the English language functions through sounds, words and structures. The system of sound is known as phonology The system of words is called morphology whereas the system of structures is named as syntax. All these three systems are integrated with one another making an organic whole which is called the English language
4. Unique
English is unique in its nature. English is not 100% French. not German or Arabic, not Latin or Greek English is English. English differs from other languages in its sounds, words, structures and functioning. Thus English has adopted vocabulary from other languages, it has shaped them remarkably as if these words are its own.
5. Dynamic
English is a dynamic language. It is constantly changing. These changes are regular and systematic, if you study the history of the English language, you will come to know the difference between Old English, Medieval English and modern English. The old English words like, 'thou and thee' are now 'you and your.
In the age of technology, we have developed 'SMS English' where many short forms are used such as; 'you" is written as 'u', 'as soon as possible' is written as 'ASAP', and 'your' is written as 'ur" Our Bollywood stars mix Hindi with English, hence a new language comes into existence, that is 'Hinglish', where some sentences are spoken in English and some in Hindi.
Sometimes, half of the sentence is spoken in Hindi and the other half in English. English is a dynamic language, therefore, it is continuously changing throughout the world.
6. Creative
English is a highly creative language, which is why it has the richest literature in the world. A writer or speaker can write or speak something he has never written or said before. English literature has a wide variety of prose and poetry, fiction and non-fictional writing, such as;
7. Modifiable
English is extremely modifiable. It Penetrates, fees and assimilates with the local language of a given country to emerge in different modified and extended forms of English to be accepted, understood and enjoyed universally, such as Indian English, American English, British English etc.
8. Grammatical
English has its own grammatical rules and structures of sentences. These grammatical rules and sentence structures and necessary for the proper relationship of the words in a sentence and to avoid ambiguity. It also clarifies the acceptable and unacceptable forms of sentences.
9. Symbolic
English is symbolic. Every English word, phrase or sentence represents some object, activity or idea. For ex., after listening to the sentence, Sami was singing a song. We can visualize how Sami could be singing the song.
10. Productive
English is also highly productive one can make thousands and lakhs of sentences with its words. There is no need to learn by rote English sentences. we can produce sentences without effort. People speak and write in different ways and styles still, the world is rapidly producing knowledge with the help of English which is doubling every 13 months.
