would be a rule about writing things down.
Which really explains most of the weird things with English...
English isn't a "real" language, it's a hodgepodge peasant language that was completely unsupervised by any sort of written down words let alone rules. Like, shit just wasn't even really written in English, everyone educated enough to know how to write, knew "proper" languages and used them. It's why English words are used for animals rich people ate (pig, cow, deer) and French was used for what rich people ate (pork, beef, venison). English just didn't need a word for eating them as food, because no one who spoke only English could afford it. Meanwhile the simple chicken was called chicken regardless of if it was in a coop or in soup.
It was only standardized with the early use of the printing press by Dutch workers who didn't know English, but still felt the need to edit what they were printing. That was like 1470ish, and written old German has been traced back to like late 700s with a consistent usage. So even though English is standardized now, it's built on an absolutely nonsensical foundation. While other European language had educated people building logical systems.
It just seems weird to people who only know English and assume it's actually normal because they learned as a baby how to speak it.
Also the reason any random American can make decent money teaching English to foreigners, it's almost impossible to learn all the random shit intentionally.