English - where all rules have exceptions. Where sounds and letters hardly ever agree.

Where we ‘see a movie’ but we ‘watch TV’. Where a ‘fat chance’ and a ‘slim chance’ mean the same thing, and where a ‘wise man’ and a ‘wise guy’ are opposites. Where a bunch of consonants are often strung together with just one vowel to help us pronounce the word – like in the word ‘strengths’. And what about a double negative forming a positive, but a double positive not forming a negative ... hmm, another exception.

 And then we’ve got various countries pronouncing English differently; America, Britain, India, Australia, and where I’m originally from – South Africa. I still have a hard time saying ‘ba-na-na’. To me it’s still a ba-naa-na’. And what about the stuff English borrows from other languages? ‘Hors d'oeuvres’, from the French, ‘robot’ from the Czechs.

What a tricky language to learn to write, and here all are, with one foot in tradition and the other in our creative realm, as we try to string together a beautiful symphony of text, to express ourselves, to correspond.

Here’s to you, all you movers and shakers of the English language – Bravo! (By the way - that word is borrowed from the Italians).