Why can’t English speakers spell? Why has it been said that English has no exact synonyms? Why are so many past tenses of verbs so unpredictable? Why are there 27 entries for “up” in the dictionary? A quick romp through the history of the English language will help us understand how it got to be the way it is today—a Germanic language overlaid by Danish, Latin, French, Italian and other languages, all the while hampered by a Latin grammar. As for the future of the English language, will immigration and internationalism dilute it?