I've always been a fan of learning where words come from -- their etymologies. Sometimes these give interesting stories about where a word comes from, how its meaning has evolved. It's not the most useful thing in the world, but I love it when I can see connections between languages; a lot of these etymologies involve word-loans.
Take, for example, the word "assassin". One proposed etymology is the following: members of a fanatical Muslim sect during the Crusades used to smoke hashish and then murder leaders on the opposing side. They started going by the name "hashishiyyin," meaning hashish-users in Arabic. Through centuries of mispronunciation, we arrived at "assassin."
I find it not at all a fault of our language that we use "assassin" more frequently than a compound word that might be more intuitive. The term "assassination" is one of the conventions that Clark talks about; with it, we can get to a more nuanced meaning.
We seem to be perfectly adept at using a vast amount of words correctly -- we don't need that much help here, but language learners do. Babies struggle in the less orthodox parts of the language, e.g. past participle formation or learning word variations for agent and instrument.
We don't worry much about simplifying these things because, as humans, we are so adapted for language. These growing pains that Clark documents are gone by eleven or twelve at the latest, and then we take the ability for granted. Sometimes these irregularities allow us to use language as a better tool. Even when they are seemingly purposeless, I like that they reflect the dynamic way our language is created and evolves.
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