To the English language

Hope you like it :)

Language spoken by my heart,

Praised by the marvelous works

Of Blake, Shakespeare and Eliot,

Give life to the feelings inside me.

A smile thou stealest me every time

A saxon genitive someone writes,

Witnesses you made my eyes

Of the wedding you performed

Between germanic and latin words*.

Thy H proudly sounds like no other's*,

Thy TH, an unique gift to my ears*,

Danceth along thy Ks, Ws and Ys*.

'Tis the magic of my beloved English,

A sweet melody that haunts my mind,

A lovely spell from ancient times.

Proud I'll speak thee for all my life.

*English is a germanic language so it has plenty of germanic words, plus it was strongly influenced by Latin and French (a neo-latin language) so nowadays we have two words, a germanic and a latin one, for most of the meanings, like for example enemy (latin) and foe (germanic); liberty (latin) and freedom (germanic).

*Speaking Portuguese, Italian and French I got used to neo-latin languages where H is mute, it only produces a sound when linked to other letters, like for example the Italian "CH" or the Portuguese "LH", in English instead H does produce a sound !

*TH is definitely a germanic sound, we don't have anything like that in neo-latin languages, I remember how much I used to struggle with it when I began to study English, now that I can pronounce it, I love it even more because it represents a goal I reached

*K, W and Y simply don't belong to neo-latin languages, we do use them only for words we took from foreign languages, especially English.

Author's Note

I've written this poem for my favourite language, which is not my native language (Portoguese) or my second language (Italian) but my third one, English.
If I made any mistake, just tell me, I really wish this poem to be perfect and "mistake-free" :)

Reviews

[Frieda P]

Learn something new every day, I didn't know that English was a germanic language. My parents always told me how difficult it was to learn, but I guess it's that way with every foreign language, especially when you get older....three languages, bravo you, I'm green with envy! Nicely pen'd.

[TL Boehm]

Stellar write, friend. English is my native tongue - I thoroughly enjoyed Latin in high school and college but am also fascinated by Gaelic.

[Vidya Bacchus]

A fitting tribute to the English language my friend.It is a wonderful poem :)

[Leslie Philibert]

Fine job..do you know Joyce ? Have a look at Ulysses, if you enjoy writers who work with words, a difficult writer, but a great one..

[外人 (Gaijin)]

Actually I do know him ;) we studied it at school, I enjoyed it but I prefered Virginia Wolf xD thanks for the review ;)

[Call_Me_Miss_Imperfect]

Oh I really like this one. It is different and totally unique. It seems perfect to me without any errors or typos or anything. Keep up the fantastic work. :)

[Coyote Poetry]

Don't forget Dryden and Ben Johnson. Two amazing writers. Dryden is my favorite. Thank you for sharing the excellent poetry.
Coyote

[外人 (Gaijin)]

I will definitely check them out as soon as I can, my friend. Already listed them among those I want to read ;)

[Coyote Poetry]

You will enjoy them. Hard to find. Today I found some books worth reading at the library sales. You may get lucky.