This
week I received an e-mail from an old friend with the following
attached to it. He didn’t write it and I don’t know the name of
the author. I found it very funny and worth reading. I think
you’ll enjoy it as well…..
Why English Is So Difficult! We’ll begin with a
box, and the plural is boxes; but the plural of ox became oxen not
oxes. One fowl is a goose, but two are called geese, yet the plural
of moose should never be meese.You may find a lone mouse or a nest
full of mice; yet the plural of house is houses, not hice. If the
plural of man is always called men, why shouldn’t the plural of pan
be called pen? If I spoke of my foot and show you my feet, and I
give you a boot, would a pair be called beet? If one is a tooth and
a whole set are teeth, why shouldn’t the plural of booth be called
beeth? Then one may be that, and three would be those, yet hat in
the plural would never be hose, and the plural of cat is cats, not
cose. We speak of a brother and also of brethren, but though we say
mother, we never say methren. Then the masculine pronouns are he,
his and him, but imagine the feminine, she, shis and shim.
Some reasons to be grateful if you grew up speaking English
1) The bandage was wound around the wound.
2) The farm was used to produce produce.
3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
4) We must polish the Polish furniture.
5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.
6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was
time to
present the present.
8) At the Army base, a bass was painted on the head of a bass
drum.
9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
10) I did not object to the object.
11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
13) They were too close to the door to close it.
14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.
15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
18) After a number of Novocain injections, my jaw got number.
19) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.
20) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
21) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?
22) I spent last evening evening out a pile of dirt.
Screwy pronunciations can mess up your mind! For example… If you
have a rough cough, climbing can be tough when going through the
bough on a tree!
Let’s face it – English is a crazy language. There is no egg in
eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple.
English muffins weren’t invented in England or French fries in
France. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren’t
sweet, are meat. We take English for granted. But if we explore its
paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are
square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig. And
why is it that writers write but fingers don’t fing, grocers don’t
groce and hammers don’t ham? Doesn’t it seem crazy that you can make
amends but not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and
get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it? If teachers
taught, why didn’t preachers praught?
If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?
Sometimes I think all the folks who grew up speaking English should
be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what language
do people recite at a play and play at a recital?
Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet
that smell? How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same,
while a wise man and a wiseguy are opposites? You have to marvel at
the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as
it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and
in which an alarm goes off by going on. English was invented by
people, across the ages, and it reflects the creativity of the
human race (which, of course, isn’t a race at all). That is why,
when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are
out, they are invisible.
