By Karan Thapar

Is English the richest of all languages? Not being fluent in any other, I have no way of answering that question authoritatively. But, that said and done, I suspect the answer could be yes. So, purely on the basis of a crude hunch, let me explain why.

First, the English tradition of separate and unique collective nouns for a variety of wildlife. I admit I’m fascinated by this. Most of us know of shoals of fish, packs of wolves, flocks of geese, herds of elephant or prides of lion. But here are a few that took me completely by surprise. The credit goes to Bambi Rao and Syeda Imam who years ago sent out a round-robin email which I saved for a rainy day. For instance, did you know of a pod of whales, a rafter of turkeys, a muster of peacocks, a coffle of asses (when roped together), a drove of asses (when driven), a skein of geese (when in flight) and a skulk of foxes?

Not to be out done by his own discoveries, Bambi has also suggested a collective noun for bankers. Borrowing from the good Reverend Spooner, he proposes ‘a wunch of bankers’!

But it’s not just the collective nouns that seem to differ for each animal in English. So too does the word for the sounds they make. Dogs bark, cats mew, snakes hiss, wolves howl, horses neigh, tigers roar, cows moo, hyenas laugh, elephants trumpet, mice squeal, pigs grunt, donkeys bray and ducks quack! Can any other language beat that?

Even the statement that birds tweet or chirp can be further refined depending on which bird you have in mind. Crows caw, peacocks scream, owls hoot, swallows titter, parrots squawk, doves coo, nightingales warble, magpies chatter, cocks crow, turkeys gobble whilst larks, believe it or not, sing!

Now, you could ask why the english language has such well defined specificity for wild life and, indeed, birds in particular. The answer, I suspect, may have something to do with 19th century mid-Victorian zoology and ornithology. Or just plain British eccentricity. Either way, its made the language delightful and wondrous.

However, it’s not just the fact that the english language has specific collective nouns for different collections of wild life or precise terms for the sounds they produce that could make it the richest of all, it also has a variety of different synonyms for the same word. According to The Oxford English thesaurus, there are 380 for the simple word ‘good’. And, if you believe what you read on the net, a certain Paul Dickson of the USA has found more than 3000 for the word ‘drunken’. They’re all included in a book called “Drink: the Definitive Drinker’s Dictionary”! And I would add that if you lay your hands on a good thesaurus you can while away several hours in amused wonderment.

The sad part is that this rich heritage has not just fallen into disuse but is in danger of being forgotten except by the fussy or the aged. After all, how often do we use the ‘right’ collective noun or the mot juste for a particular sound? Rarely, if ever, is the answer. Worse, those who do are often sniggered at.

Instead of rejoicing in the richness English offers, we’ve all dumbed down and happily settled for the limited range of sms-speak. Imprecise words like ‘good’, ‘nice’, ‘bad’ and the dreadful ‘awesome’ have colonized our minds and begun to dominate our speech. Quite frankly, the loss is ours.

Finally, you can have a great deal of fun with the English language in ways that I suspect you can’t with many others. Read the first two stanzas of this Ode to the Spell Checker and see if you agree:

Eye halve a spelling chequer

It came with my pea sea

It plainly marques four my revue

Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word

And weight four it two say

Weather eye am wrong oar write

It shows me strait a weigh.