Now back to our "rules of English": have these not been a moving target over the past 500 years and is there any real consistency in them? This is what I love about English, that it developed more or less spontaneously without much in the way of rules, except after the fact, centuries later, when scholars would rightly try to codify the language, the same way Music developed from the time of the Italian Renaissance to the time of Bach. Rules of English is an interesting notion when there seem to be more exceptions. The real reason for this is the sheer amount of warring tribes that invaded the British Isles where each would introduce a new variant of the language, much like the currents of the ocean or of the winds over time. It was the job of scholars to try to make sense out of this but you'll see in England alone, more dialects of English than in the rest of the world combined, where each county almost has a separate and distinct version of it.

Just a thought.

Now where is Dr. Stewart to weigh in on this. I would defer to his judgement any day!