English: The Weirdest Language?

English is weird. From bewildering spelling to convoluted grammar, there are reasons why language professionals spend years unraveling its intricacies. Even Klingon, which obeys its own rules, may seem less confounding. All the same, English is not alone in its oddities. Other languages can be peculiar and challenging too. From the perplexing to the downright bizarre, languages around the world bemuse even the most seasoned linguists. So, does English outweird them all? Here we explore ten stand-out examples of language quirks and find out which truly is the weirdest. The competition is fiercer than you think! When we compare to the weirdest contenders in each category, can English win every single one?

1. Chaotic spelling

English spelling is famously chaotic, partly because it hasn’t kept up with changes in pronunciation and partly because English steals words from other languages with different spelling practices. We have incessant silent letters and a general lack of consistency between spelling and pronunciation: “If only you knew the size of the sighs of the new gnu.”

Contenders: Here comes French with all its silent letters. In “As-tu vu le ver allant vers le verre vert?” (“Did you see the green worm going towards the green glass?”) there are four words that all sound like “ver.” And “sans soucis” (“no worries”) sounds like “s’en soucient” (“[they] worry about it”) and “cent sous six” (“100 under 6”).

But now Irish enters the ring from the other side: it has very consistent spelling, but it’s full of silent letters and makes no sense to anyone else – “Tá do mháthair an-fhlaithiúil leis an gcat” (“Your mother is very generous to the cat”) sounds sort of like “ta doe wahir an lahool lesh a got.”

Winner: English, because if it starts to lose, it simply steals a word from another language with a different weird spelling and dons it as effortlessly as Siobhan sports a beret.

2. Capitalization

People Who Are Fussy About Grammar will primly insist that capitalization in English is clear and consistent. Meanwhile, The Chicago Manual of Style has dozens of pages of rules on where and how to capitalize and not to capitalize (we have a whole article about this).

Contenders: German smiles and says, “Also, Sie wollen essen?” (“So, do you want to eat?”). Or did it say, “sie wollen Essen” (“they want food”)? Then it adds “Lachen und Leiden” (“laughter and suffering”). Or was that “lachen und leiden” (“laugh and suffer”)?

Japanese confidently enters the fray, highlighting that it has four systems of writing that can be intermixed, just one of which is the Latin alphabet. It points out that some words have three or four different ways to write them, and when it uses the Latin alphabet the capitalization practices are variable. At this revelation, the other languages cower beneath the table and start shouting that Japanese is cheating.

Winner: Sorry, German, your rules are still too consistent and rational. Japanese is disqualified for being offside and for playing in a different league of a different sport. English still stands, albeit a little shaky.

3. Definite and indefinite articles

We may think that the difference between “a dog” and “the dog” is obvious and simple, and the distinction between “drink a beer,” “drink the beer,” and “drink some beer” doesn’t seem unduly troublesome. But you may have a different opinion if you’re a speaker of a language that doesn’t use articles, like Polish or Chinese.

Contenders: Naturellement, French jumps right in here. It uses the definite article much more broadly than English does. Where we say, “I take acetaminophen for headaches,” French says, “Je prends de l’acétaminophène pour les maux de tête” (“I take of the acetaminophen for the ills of head”). You can even have it on words English would never stick it on: “C’est l’un des problèmes que l’on voit le plus souvent” (“It’s the one of the problems that the one sees the most often”, in other words, “It’s one of the problems we see most often”).

Then Swedish steps up, with Norwegian, Danish, and Icelandic standing ready. They all take the indefinite article that goes before a word (“en hund,” “a dog”) and stick it onto the end of the word to make the definite article (“hunden,” “the dog”), but then add another article if the noun has a modifier (“den stora hunden,” “the big dog”).

But suddenly, from the wings, Finnish comes blasting in. Finnish has no definite or indefinite articles, and instead expresses definiteness and indefiniteness through a whole army of noun inflections and strategic word order. For instance, “joukko sotilaita” (using the partitive, which expresses the idea of some of a mass) means “a group of soldiers,” but “soltilaiden joukko” (using the genitive, which expresses association or belonging, and putting the soldiers first) means “the group of soldiers.” And “Haluan palan kakkua” (using the partitive) means “I want a piece of cake,” but “Haluan palan kakusta” (using the elative, which expresses taking away) means “I want a piece of the cake.”

Winner: For weirdness, it’s pretty hard to beat Finnish on this one.

4. Attributive nouns

When using nouns to modify other nouns, normal languages use things like possessives, prepositions, or compounds. English does too, sometimes – “farmers’ market,” “house of blues,” “dogtag”– but sometimes it just stacks nouns, as in “wind speed measurement device”. And sometimes English gets completely confused about what it’s doing: you’ll see “men’s room” written as “mens room” like a noun stack instead of a possessive, but what the heck is “mens”? The plural of “man” is “men,” but you’ll never see “men room”! 

Contenders: You think noun stacks are bad? French answers the English “wind speed measurement device” with twice as many words: “appareil de mesure de la vitesse du vent.” Then German dances in and thrusts “Windgeschwindigkeitsmessgerät.”

Winner: Not sure who wins, but anyone who has to typeset those monstrous German compounds definitely loses. And someone typesetting in French will need considerably more space.

5. “Do” questions

What do you think about the way English asks questions? Do you like it? Does it bother you that we have to use a form of “do” so much of the time? It does bother speakers of other languages.

Contenders: At first glance, French might not seem like a strong challenger as often it uses just a simple inversion of the verb “aller”. “Vous allez” (“You go”) flips to “Allez-vous?” (“Do you go?”). But wait! “Qu’est-ce que c’est” (“What is it that it is”) somehow means “What is it,” and “Do we know what it is?” is “Est-ce qu’on sait ce que c’est?” (“Is it that one knows that that it is?”).

Greek, on the other hand, sidesteps all this entirely, with its lack of any grammatical distinction for questions. There is no need for an auxiliary like “do”; you just indicate it’s a question by intonation or punctuation. “We know what it is” is “Ξέρουμε τι είναι” (“Xéroume ti eínai”) and “Do we know what it is?” is “Ξέρουμε τι είναι;” (“Xéroume ti eínai?”) That’s right: in Greek, a semicolon is a question mark).

Winner: You might assume that French’s verb inversions would triumph because of English’s “do” consistency, but … what does it is? Sorry, what is it? Oh, yeah, English doesn’t use “do” with certain auxiliaries. So, has English the victory?

6. “Do” negation

You don’t mind the “do” questions? OK, how about the “do” negation? We don’t even notice it, we’re so used it, but every so often we can’t use it, and sometimes, given the option, we say “I think not.”

Contenders: Afrikaans leaps in with its insistence on negating everything twice: “That is not my problem” is “Dit is nie my probleem nie” (“That is not my problem not”) and “No-one understands this” is “Niemand verstaan dit nie” (“No-one understands this not”).

But French just sees that and laughs. “Ce n’est pas une problème – ce n’est rien!” (“It’s not not a problem – it’s not nothing!”) it says. Well, actually, it writes that, but it says, “C’est pas une problème – c’est rien!” It goes on, “Personne n’a jamais vu une langue comme le français; aucune autre langue ne fait ça” (“Person not has never seen a language like the French; none other language not does this”, in other words, “No one has ever seen a language like French; no other language does this”).

Winner: Don’t even try to beat French. It’s the ne plus ultra.

7. No future tense

“What?” you counter. “English does have a future tense!” Well … no. It has ways of expressing the future using the present tense. While the auxiliary “will” as in “I will go there” may seem to herald a future tense, it’s technically a present-tense helper, not a conjugation of the verb like in the past tense (“I went there”). Moreover, English often forgoes “will” entirely, opting for present tense plus context to signal the future: “I’m seeing the doctor tomorrow.” “Oh, yeah? I’m going next week.”

Contenders: No future tense, says Chinese? Try no tense at all! Yes, Chinese has auxiliaries that can be used to express things such as whether an action is completed (Mandarin 了 le does that), and sometimes an auxiliary is used similarly to “will” in English (我们去 wǒmen qù is “we go” and 我们会去 wǒmen huì qù is “we will go”), but in general, you know the time from context, like everything else – Chinese has no conjugations.

But wait! French, which can’t stand to be out of any linguistic duel, jumps in with its handling of the past tense. Oh, yes, if you learned French, you learned the “literary” past tense. Forget it; no one uses it. You also learned that “avoir” (“have”) plus past participle is the usual way to express the past – “J’ai bu tout le vin” means “I have drunk all the wine” or “I drank all the wine.” But often in narrations of the past, French just uses the present tense: “En 1800, Bonaparte attaque et vainc l’archiduché d'Autriche une nouvelle fois” (“In 1800, Bonaparte attacks and defeats the Archduchy of Austria once again”).

Winner: English, with its complex blend of present tense and auxiliaries, is going to be in this fight for the long haul … it’s not going down.

8. Progressive verbs

The English use of present progressive – “I’m drinking tea” – is quite uncommon. And it may seem unnecessary: Why not just say “I drink tea”? Well, we do say that, but usually just for habitual actions (“Every afternoon, I drink tea”) or narrations (“So I sit down. I drink tea. And then he walks through the door”) – or, of course, the future (“Yesterday I drank whiskey; tomorrow I drink tea”). If we’re in the middle of drinking tea, even if Germans would just say “Ich trinke Tee” and French would say “Je bois du thé,” we have to add that auxiliary and use that participle. “I’m drinking tea” right now, but “I don’t drink tea” as a rule!

Contenders: Icelandic steps in to say that English is not unique among Germanic languages in doing this: the progressive is usual in Icelandic too – “Ég er að drekka te” (“I am at drinking tea”).

And then Scots Gaelic leaps forward with “Tha mi ag òl tì” (“Am I at drinking tea”) to show that English isn’t even unique among languages in Great Britain for this.

Winner: This one is holding even – we’ll call it a tie.

9. Prepositions

Once you get into English prepositions, you’ll never get out of them. It’s not just that you can’t get around them and you can’t get over them, but you still have to get by with them; it’s that sometimes the way people from one place use a preposition is different to how people from another place do. Or is that “different from”? “Different than”?

Contenders: Ah, we’re kidding ourselves on this one. Prepositions are weird everywhere. They’re the little pieces that come in your IKEA packaging and you just hope you use the right one in the right place – and that there are enough of them, and that you won’t have an extra one left that you were supposed to hold something up with. And different languages use them differently. You can live in London, in England, but you live “à Paris” and “en France.”

And then Irish confidently throws its cap in the ring: “I have this one. I own this one!” Only it actually says “Tá an ceann seo agam. Is liom an ceann seo!” (“Is the one here at-me. Is with-me the one here!”). Irish expresses far more relations with prepositions than English ever could.

Oh, but wait. Finnish approaches stealthily from behind like Jason Momoa sneaking up on Henry Cavill. In Finland, “You live in Helsinki” is “Asut Helsingissä” (“you-live in-Helsinki”) and “I go from the car to the door” is “Menen autosta ovelle” (“I-go from-car to-door”). In Finnish, you don’t use prepositions nearly as much – because all those noun cases take their place. How many noun cases? Fifteen!

Winner: No winners. Only losers!

10. Apostrophes

Uh-oh … English absolutely can’t handle not being suuuuper weird. It’s a point of pride! So it comes charging in for a final attack with apostrophes. English loves the apostrophe – it’s its ultimate weapon. They’re so evil, even most people who have spoken English their whole lives get them wrong sometimes (see “mens room”). Apostrophes were introduced to indicate omitted letters, as in contractions (“it’s,” “can’t”), but someone got the idea that the possessive was also a contraction (e.g., “John’s” from “John his” – they didn’t pause to look at “Jane’s” or “the people’s”). And then, to deal with the plural possessive, English just moved the apostrophe. So now “the cooks”, “the cook’s”, and “the cooks’” all mean different things, although they sound identical.

Contenders: Of course, French is going to leap into the fray. And French uses apostrophes a lot – because many contractions are obligatory (“C’est l’idée”). But those apostrophes are used consistently and only for omitted letters, although aujourd’hui (“today,” literally “onthedayoftoday”) the lost letters are sometimes forgotten. French apostrophes are all over the place, like threads on a well-worn shirt, but they’re not chaotic.

Then Afrikaans makes a late entry to the fight. It also uses apostrophes occasionally for omitted letters, but its most common apostrophe is on the indefinite article, which is pronounced like “a” (as in “a thing”) but is descended from Dutch “een” and so it’s written “’n” – always: “Dit is nie ’n konsonant nie” (“It is not a consonant”). And if it’s at the start of a sentence, it’s not capitalized, but the next word is: “’n Beer kom” (“A bear is coming”). Aside from that, though, Afrikaans isn’t that weird.

Everyone turns and looks at Hawai‘ian, but it shakes its head. “Not my fight,” it says. “There’s no apostrophe in the Hawai‘ian language. That’s an ‘okina. It represents a glottal stop.”

Winner: English’s apostrophes remain unbeaten.

So, is English the weirdest language? Well in our contest, at least, it’s the reigning champion, despite formidable challengers. For now, in the realm of linguistic peculiarity, English stands undefeated.

The serious side of this weirdness

The quirks of language, while fascinating to linguists, pose significant challenges in academic and professional contexts for people whose first language is not English. While many English speakers aren’t fluent in any other languages, the expectation is that speakers of other languages will produce not just fluent, but expert academic or business English. This expectation places an additional burden on them, making English’s weirdness an inadvertent gatekeeper in global communication.

Research shows that multilingual scientists and academics working in fields where English dominates, such as prestigious journals, have to work harder just to keep up. The same is true in every academic field where the dominance of English-speaking journals creates a barrier for global majority. Mastery in a field is not enough; recognition increasingly demands proficiency in English while writing in a second or third language.

For multilingual professionals and writers (and their editors), Draftsmith offers a solution with its fluency enhancer. It’s an AI-powered tool designed to fix the issues that all of this weirdness creates. Draftsmith works seamlessly in Microsoft Word, and offers suggestions that help text sound like the author grew up with English (and all of its weirdness) as a first language. For anyone navigating the complexities of English at a professional level, a seven-day free trial is available at draftsmith.ai.