We hear a lot today about how some immigrants need to try harder to learn the English language. And there is perhaps some truth to this. But having been born in Woodland Park and existed almost every day since then between Rampart Range and Gold Hill, I am learning that perhaps I, and maybe all of us, are destined to continue learning and even stumbling over our words all of our lives.

I learned this week that flammable and inflammable mean the same thing. This may come as a surprise to my readers as it did for me. Webster describes the prefix “in-” as “often signifying a negative or opposite concept when used with certain words.” Like how invisible is the opposite of visible.

Or what about the word bolt. The horse bolted after the farmer bolted the gate. Bolt can mean to secure something or to run away. Bolting gates is probably something that happens one hundred times a day in our fair county and that (thankfully) prevents many bolting horses from ending up where they don’t belong.

In the United States, English classes are typically required every year of a student’s K–12 education. That’s 13 years and is as long or longer than any other subject, going from the most foundational skills in elementary school, wandering later onto harder reading comprehension and simple essays in middle school and ending with advanced essay writing and American and British literature taught by the 12th grade.

Which of my readers doesn’t still say to themselves, “I before E except after C”? A great truth, except of course when properly spelling words such as neighbor or weigh. There seems to be an exception for everything we have been taught.

Our English forebears didn’t make any of this easy for us when they were forming these words from their many disparate origins. English derives from Germanic, Latin, French, Greek and other languages, and just to confuse us some more, borrows words from a variety of other languages, just as other languages have borrowed from us. Does anyone here have a patio (Spanish), play piano (Italian) or like sushi (Japanese)?

The truth is, America is best when it is the melting pot it has historically been. And why should our language with all of its rules and exceptions and unique origins be any different?

Ruth Wiseman is a Woodland Park native and a dual-enrolled high school student attending Pikes Peak State College.