Every language has its weird and frustrating features. English orthographic rules pose an annoying obstacle for foreign students of the language. Students who begin to study German often find the language’s complex sentence structure more akin to a puzzle than a straightforward proposition. For foreigners in China, the fact that the syllable “ma” can assume 4 distinct meanings depending on your tone is a cause of anxiety for Westerners.
Every language has a set of features that appear not merely arbitrary but unnecessarily difficult (at least, from the perspective of outsiders). But could you imagine what it’d be like to grow up without a language at all? Here’s your link of the week:
The Therapy of Distance 