Something amazing about language: We speak it, we read it, we write it … and we know doodle-squat about it. And more’s the pity when it comes to English, because I find its length and breadth fascinating.

For one thing, if English were a dog, it’d be a mixed breed — in other words, a mutt. Then again, given the high status and price tags of mutts these days, I guess we could also call it a “designer language.”

But why do I call it a mutt — or if that offends you, a designer language? Simple: It’s due to its history, which is as varied and colorful as it gets.

Where to start? The beginning seems as good a place as any.

What we now call England was first settled way back in pre-history, hundreds of thousands of years ago. But whether the folks settled there or just passed through as hunters or gatherers, we don’t know. What we do know is from about 20,000 to 6,000 years ago, people literally strutted their stuff to Jolly Old, since it wasn’t an island.

England not an island? Yep, that’s right, because a lot of what’s now under the Atlantic, North Sea and English Channel, was once above it. It was connected to mainland Europe by a huge land mass that eventually got washed away in floods and a monster tsunami. Interestingly, since I began this column speaking about dogs, the land mass was called Doggerland.

FYI, the Dogger in Doggerland had nothing to do with pups — designer or otherwise. Instead, in 1990 it was named by Byony Coles, a Brit archeologist, after something called the Dogger Bank, which is a North Sea sandbank.

So what, you might ask, does all this have to do with the English language?

Nothing, since at that point there WAS no English language. But I’m gettin’ there, so don’t rush me, OK?

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Island people

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The first widely organized peeps to settle England were the Celts, who ran the show from c. 750 BC – 43 AD, till they got knocked outta the box in the early 5th century by the Anglo-Saxons. And here’s where English, the language, got its start. The Angles, the Saxons and Jutes were Germanic tribes who took over England after the Romans. While they obviously spoke German, their language evolved into what we call Old English (or if you prefer Ye Olde English). If you’ve seen examples of it you know it’s completely incomprehensible to us Modern English types. But it became the basis of our language, giving us scads of words as well as our grammar. There’s a lot of debate how long Old English was spoken, but a safe bet is around 700 years, till around 1100.

So English is a Germanic language? Well, kinda sorta.

German is the basis of English, in that 90% of the words we use in speech are German in origin. But dig this: 90% of the words in the dictionary are of Latin or French origin. Huh? Whuh? How could that be? Hey, don’t blame me — I’m just the messenger. The guy who shoulders the blame on this one is King William I, pretty much unknown now, but well known to schoolchildren of my youth as William the Conqueror.

In 1066, William and his army invaded and conquered England. Since W the C came from France, and his descendents ruled England for another 300 years, a whole lotta French came into our language. This explains why there are so many words of Latin origin in English, since French is a Romance language (“Romance” in this case, NOT having to do with low lights, soft music, and kissy-huggy stuff, but with being derived from the Roman city-state, whose denizens spoke — Ta da! — Latin).

So much for history, let’s move on to language. And a good place for me to start is with the word “Norman,” as in the Norman Invasion. As I said, the Will the Con was French — to be most specific, he was from Normandy. Normandy, Shmormandy, you say? Don’t be so snotty, because Normand, taken over by Rollo, a Viking warlord, helped create a French dialect named Norman. In the dialect, Norman means “Norseman,” which means Viking. And who woulda thunk it?

Oh yeah, and speaking of Vikings …

They also invaded England at various times, and a word they contributed to English is “beserk.” The word derived from a bunch of Viking raiders called “Berserkers.” They had the rep of being, to put it subtly, murderous drooling maniacs, the NHL enforcers of their day. As for the word “berserk”? It describes their standard garment, made of bear skin, which was a bear shirt.

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Casting a spell

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Now on to The Bugaboo of English-Language Schoolchildren Since Time Immemorial — orthography. Orthography is a fancy word for “spelling,” and comes from the Greek roots “ortho” — correct, and “graphia” — spelling. The word came to us via Latin, then Old French, and thanks once again to William the Conqueror.

But here’s the beauty of English: While orthography literally means correct writing, spelling has nothing to do with good writing. It’s not important, and in fact is pretty much irrelevant. It’s window dressing, is all. It’s like saying soldiers’ uniforms denote battle worthiness or a jockey’s silks determine the winner, or even that a well-groomed haircut indicates a well-ordered mind. And I say to all of that, “Piffle!”

We already know English is made up of words from other languages. But dig this: Unlike other languages, we take foreign words at their spellings. This often has nothing to do with how they sound, nor does it make any sense, so if you’re not good at memorizing spelling, it’s a nightmare.

For example, the “N” sound. Is it N as in New, or as in Knew? Or N as in Pneumonia? Or N as in Gnu? Or even N as in Mnemonic?

How’s about the “F” sound. It can, of course, be plain old F as in Friend. But what fun is that when you can have it “ph” as in Physics or Philosophy, or even “gh” as in Tough and Enough?

What sound is “C”? Of course it depends on whether you have it as a “K” sound, as in Scan or Scorch … or simply silent, as in Scintillating, Science or Oscilloscope, in which case it serves no purpose at all.

The list is endless: Amok, (a Malay word) is written with an “O” but pronounced as a “U.” The “OU” in Count pronounced OW, but in Wound pronounced OO, and in Though pronounced OH.

But, really, it’s all nonsense because when people misspell a word, they do it phonetically (or if you prefer, Fuhnetikly). And since writing is simply sounds put on paper, you’ll read it just fine. If I write, “The yello dawg bit the maleman in the doopah,” it won’t interfere with the writing’s meaning or fluency, just its appearance. And as we all know from had life lessons, all too often appearance means nothing at all (Does wearing a tie make a businessman any more competent? Does waxin’ the bejammers out of your car make you a better driver?).

Plus, misspellings can be spotted and corrected in seconds — hell, even machines can do it for us in many cases. But a crappy piece of writing that’s spelled correctly can only be either labored over and rewritten, or maybe more appropriately, tossed onto the pyre. Put most simply, bad writing is bad writing; bad spelling is bad proofreading.

But none of that matters, since peeps that know little about writing will insist that spelling IS important. This usually comes in the form of a comment like, “He’s a lousy writer, can’t spell at all.” Or even worse, poor spellers will say that about themselves.

Want some perspective? Howz about this: There are six authenticated William Shakespeare autographs … and four of them are spelled differently. Keep in mind Shakespeare had an extraordinary vocabulary — considered by experts to be one of the largeest of all English writers. And he did it without the aid of a decent dictionary.

It wasn’t until the mid-1800’s, when Noah Webster published his dictionary, that so many words were printed in one volume, and thus standardized spellings could become widespread. But did they? Not really, and so standard spellings probably had an uneven record way into the late 1800’s.

And what does this mean?

Just this: If you’re a poor speller, your spelling itself is fine — you’re just living in the wrong century.