I'm aware of the arguments. There's at least two things worth unpacking here: (1) creolisation =/= pidginisation, (2) not all language contact effects are the s

I'm aware of the arguments. There's at least two things worth unpacking here: (1) creolisation =/= pidginisation, (2) not all language contact effects are the same thing as either of these. English isn't uniquely weird, at least no more so than any other language, in any linguistic sense. > On the other hand, it has unnecessarily complex spelling, which hasn't changed along with the language itself, leading to many inconsistencies Sure, in addition to typically keeping the spelling of words borrowed from other languages, even though those follow different conventions than does English spelling. But orthography and writing systems are a bolted on thing, they're not part of 'language' in any deep sense.