Word's spell-check doesn't have a leg to stand on

Of course, the English language is a mighty beast to tame and, to be perfectly honest, I'm glad it is my native tongue. I'm even willing to accept the American bastardisation of it (including sidewalk, trash can etc.) than rather suffer getting to grips with synonyms, homonyms and the various rules associated with the apostrophe.

What I will say in defence of the Americans, however, is that this entire "s" instead of "z" thing is a total fallacy and one that people are too willing to attribute to American ignorance instead of considering the facts. As a lecturer of mine once went to great pain to explain (and I should probably inform you that he is from New York), the replacement of "s" with zee comes about through a simple phonetic fad that has since stuck. The real problem arose when one man - namely Bill Gates - took it upon himself to indicate any "organisation", say, to be underlined in squiggly red pen as a mark of incorrect spelling. Thus it was the ignorance of one man that caused the problem. (Poor old Bill Gates - he's a bit like the Nazi regime in that he gets blamed for everything that's wrong with the world. There should be a Godwin's law for Bill Gates and Microsoft in general...but I digress.)

Putting the s and z thing to one side, English language users can hardly claim their language makes much sense. If it is not words that are spelt the same but with different meanings (calibre, glasses, bush...) or words that sound the same but are spelt differently (their, there, they're...) then it is silly rules that aren't in fact applicable. "i before e except after c" or whenever you are writing height, weight, freight etc.

Then there is the double negative: don't get me wrong, it's not that I don't like them, it's just the lack of consistency when it comes to the double positive. If you don't not like something then you are commonly understood to like it; but if you do do like something then you really like it. Just imagine if you did did like something such that the double positive meant that you didn't like it - the world of maths would be in turmoil and my lecturer would have more to worry about than his s and z problem.

The worst casualties of the complicated structure of the English language, though, are those that write (or right) foreign cuisine menus. Though often valiant attempts at taking on the beast are made, such writing often falls short of any kind of grammatical accuracy, or indeed of making any sense whatsoever. Examples include "Beef rashers beaten up in the country people's fashion", "Eat your fingers off", (as opposed to 'finger-lickin' good') and "Our wines leave you nothing to hope for".

In order to deal with such inaccurate translations, I am willing to offer my services to take-away establishments for the reasonable wage of a free meal every week. That doesn't sound half bad.