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Thomas Castino
Mrs. Bolton & Mrs. Taylor
English IV
10 April 2015
Interview Section
English is one of the most popular languages in the world. It is growing quickly in
number of speakers and is only behind Chinese and Spanish. The difference between the three
languages is that English is taught as a second language to almost every developed country.
English is considered to be an extremely difficult language to learn for a non-native speaker and
this is due to the patchiness of it. By patchiness, I mean the influence of so many different
cultures all mixed into one language without much logic or flow to it. English is a language that
has been altered many times by different peoples and therefore has special qualities to it that
other Latin languages do not share.
One of the biggest problems with English is its grammar. It has completely inconsistent
spelling rules and its structure is backwards from similar languages. I was able to interview an
English teacher at ACHS who shared a lot of similar thoughts with me. For example, on the topic
of simply constructing a sentence, Mr Worden said: The number of students with no idea what
makes a sentence a sentence is truly staggering...the result is often a terrifying mess of
fragments, run-ons, and stream-of-consciousness confusion, (Worden). English speakers today,
especially teenagers, seem to be losing grasp of basic grammar. These include forming sentences,
spelling, punctuation, and word choice. In fact, I am disgusted when I hear people try to read
aloud. It is almost as if they had never learned how to do it, and dont even seem to realize it.
Speaking of how things sound, people also seem to be losing their sense of knowing how things

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should sound. By this, I mean most native speakers should be able to reread a sentence or a
paragraph and have that feeling of whether or not it is correct. Nowadays, this does not appear to
be the case. I have had personal experience with this with my friends. I would ask them to repeat
a sentence or read it out loud and they would not be able to see the problem with it. Mr. Worden
also talked about how much better it is for readers to pick up on these sort of things. He said that
readers have a much better sense of what sounds right or wrong than non-readers (Worden).
Based on the fact that many of my peers loathe reading, this seems like a logical conclusion to
make. Basically, people today suck at English. This is not entirely because it is hard, but because
they do not care enough to really pay attention.
Going back to its roots, English, like its Latin siblings, has had many centuries to
develop. Around the 5th century AD, English was created. At that point, English was just a
combination of various Celtic languages and dialects. It had just evolved from an Indo-European
language that almost every language spanning from England to India shared as an ancestor. This
was the start to a very bad trend of the English language that involves taking random parts of
other languages and mashing them into English. David Crystal, an author who has written over
100 books about English, seemed to agree with me. He argued that the 5th century was the most
important period of English. Since its creation, English has developed so much that its original
form is pretty much an entirely new language. However, while the creation and subsequent
development of the language is crucial to how it is today, Crystal argued that the most important
period for English was between 1750 and 1800. It was at this time that dictionaries were being
made and grammar was being taught in schools. It was the first time that people began to learn
the real rules of the language (Crystal). Comparing that to todays schooling, it seems that there
has been a major turn from grammar. There are times when I almost feel as if the only real

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grammar lessons I have received were phonics in second grade. Since then, we, my peers and I,
have been expected to learn what is right and what is wrong via writing papers and being
corrected. In my opinion, this is the worst way to learn anything. People do not learn by being
corrected, they learn by being taught.
Similarly, I got the chance to interview Kevin Stroud. Stroud runs the History of English
Podcast. I dont think I need to say this, but the podcast is about the history of English. It has
gotten good reviews and seems to have built up a good name and reputation for itself. I was able
to get some amazing answers from Stroud, but the best was by far about dialects. He brought up
that many English speakers view British English as being superior to or above American English.
This is probably because they have fancy accents and are snobby with their queen and large
empire and whatever else they have in England. However, upon actually looking at it, the British
are the ones that have worsened the language and the American version has kept most aspects.
For example, British people often leave out the letter r, often replacing it with an ah sound
(Stroud). This same view can be taken when looking at a ton of other areas of the language that
the English people have changed. The fact that many Americans view British English in this way
shows that they think lowly of themselves. This can arguably be justified, as it seems like
nobody cares whether or not they can speak correctly anymore. Because now we have autocorrect and spell check.
Essentially, I believe that English has had too many other languages influence it all at
once without any regulation is in need of some change. The native speakers have pretty much
given up and the language differs extremely with different geographic regions. Im not sure how
it can be changed, but I know that change is needed before the language which is so full of
beautifully descriptive words is worsened even further.

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Works Cited
Crystal, David. Personal interview. 11 April 2015.
Stroud, Kevin. Personal interview. 14 April 2015.
Worden, Samuel. Personal interview. 11 April 2015.