What do non-native English speakers think of the English language?

(Although I primarily read/speak/write English these days, I didn't speak a word of it until age 14. I am originally from Japan.)

I think it was Rasmus Lerdorf who once quipped PHP is like English. I can't find the exact quotation, but it went something like "Yeah, PHP has quirks and isn't the most elegant, but it's simple overall and easy to get started. Look at English. Full of exceptions! But having a lot of exceptions and grammatical inconsistencies didn't prevent English from becoming the dominant natural language."

The analogy stuck with me. Like PHP, English is a relentlessly pragmatic language that's relatively simple with a ton of gotchas.

(This is not meant to be a knock on PHP. I actually like PHP. I even landed a patch for its OpenSSL library once.)

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Kiyoto Tamura on Quora:

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