My biggest gripe as a non native speaker is phrasal verbs.

Unless you know exactly what they mean, you are screwed. You can't decypher them, there's no link between the meaning of the component parts and the phrasal verb.

As my English teacher used to tell us jokingly: you should never say: "I get on with my brother, but I get off with my sister".

In response to yours:

1. They're super useful. "I don't want this spoon, I want that spoon."

2. To make text more readable.

3. Because English is a mutt of a language, Germanic grammar and common words with Latin, French, and Greek chunks stirred in and a sprinkle of everything else.

4. Like your article complaint, hardly unique to English. Spanish does both as well.

5. Better for both building suspense and for poetry.

Things that annoy me: When one letter makes multiple sounds, or when you need to use multiple letters together to denote a sound.

Why the fuck are there no rules for pronunciation?? There is very little consistency in English.

I mean cases like yes - eyes, Kansas - Arkansas.

There are so many, and I think it comes down to the fact that English is a mix of at least two language families and how a bunch of grammar nerds overcorrected it.

The word "colonel."

Where is the god damn R sound coming from?!

I acknowledge english has many confusing and contrary facets, but I must counter with why do other languages assign gender to things and make others neutral? A car could be female, the muffler neutral, and the window glass male.

Also, I don’t have much to offer regarding adjectives other than it doesn’t matter. The human brain is capable of sorting both “the car blue” and “the blue car” just fine.

All the words that sound the same and/or are spelled the same. I always thought sentences like I saw the saw saw the seasaw must be hella confusing for non-native speakers.

Why is there no adjective form of the word integrity? If someone has integrity they are _____? Because integral means something else so it can’t be that.

I suggest integratuitous.

I like these things, makes it feel quirky and weird. I don’t want my natural language to work like a computer language!

English lets you get away with saying things you don't exactly mean. A lot of the efforts from groups that might be disparaged as 'woke' over preferred terminology exist because it allows for so much ambiguity.

To use a common example: there's a difference between "Group X struggle to get bank loans" and "Banks have consistently not loaned to Group X" in terms of where the fault lies, but because English allows us to use the former to mean the latter, it seems like an imposition to be reminded.

Other languages - e.g. German - don't allow for this: your intended emphasis changes the word order, so you have to think about what you really mean.

@Xylight When they taught you a really really important rule of the language and this rule has a little exception. Then another exception, also another exception, please add one more exception, around of applause for another exception, and another exception...

The cycle continues until you see that the "rule" should be the exception and all those "exceptions" should be the rule.

Mr. Bean.

Oh sorry, I thought you said The English.

The way they show up asking to buy some tea and before you know it they are running the show. Also now everyone is hooked on opium.

We have overlapping terms that describe things we already have terms and words for.

We need to think of newer words, than just applying an already made word to mean several different things.

Capital letters let you read faster.