Lilly: ranrod: It seems to make sense that the less memorization needed for effective communication, the more brain-power would be available for higher function. No? I totally agreee
You may believe in what you want but - since you said it in public - could you please back it up with some good links to the newest, well documented, research on the topic? I bet you, you will find nothing of the sort. In contrary, you will find plenty about brain plasticity, brain non-locality, redundancies, and so on. Well, some people still believe that an average human uses only 10% of his/her brain capacity. If we only could tap into that untapped 90% we could all be geniuses, or we could easily produce "design children". Well such believes are ridiculously wrong, but it does not stop many "brain gurus" from selling dubious product and services that suppose to significantly increase your brain power. A brain snake oil anyone?
And the notion that English language is simple, clean and logical (as opposed to "ridiculously complex" Polish) is also wrong. I would not get that far myself, but I've heard many English native speakers admitting that their language is dysfunctional. Dysfunctional? Didn't you just mention the brain's higher functions?
I will help you a bit with it. Let's start with English homophones, which an English speaker must memorize in order to effectively communicate. Fifty homophones starts with letter "A", such as: airless, heirless; Abel, able; or ai, I, aye and eye. Here is the entire list of the homophone distribution frequency among letters of English alphabet: A-50, B-96, C-143, D-35, E-27, F-60, G-48, H-48, I-26, J-10, K-33, L-63, M-67, N-29, O-17, P-116, Q-9, R-85, S-148, T-71, U-5, V-10, W-99, X-2, Y-8, Z-2. Altogether, this makes an impressive list of 1307 homophones to be memorized. The details are here: http://www.homophone.com
Then you have heteronyms - the words that are spelled identically but have different meanings when pronounced differently. For example: Lead, pronounced LEED, means to guide. However, lead, pronounced LED, means a metallic element. You can see the list at this address: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~cellis/heteronym.html. I will just count the distribution among English alphabet: A-7, B-4, C-12, D-7, E-1,F-0, G-0, H-1, I-3, J-0, K-0, L-3, M-1, N-2, O-1, P-11, R-11, S-8, T-1,U-0, W2, X-0,Y-0, Z-0. One nice example: "She wished she could desert him in the desert."
Here is the first verse of a popular "poem", which underlines how "dysfunctional" English is and how much one has to memorize. Yet this does not stop the English speakers to develop their higher brain functions. :-)
[I am not permitted to copy it here in its entirety, but you can find many of such copies on internet.]
Dearest creature in creation
Studying English pronunciation,
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse
I will keep you, Susy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye your dress you'll tear,
So shall I! Oh, hear my prayer,
Pray, console your loving poet,
Make my coat look new, dear, sew it!
(…)
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