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? If the
plural of tooth is teeth, why isn’t the
plural of booth beeth? One goose,
2 geese. So one loose tooth, 2 leese teeth?
One index, 2 indices?
Doesn’t it seem crazy that you can
make amends but not one amend, that you
comb through annals of history but
not a single annal? 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 preacher
praught? If a vegetarian eats
vegetables, what does a humanitarian
eat? If you wrote a letter, perhaps you
bote your tongue?
Sometimes I think all the English speakers
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 or a truck by ship? Have noses
that run and feet that smell? Park
on driveways and drive on parkways? Lift a
thumb to thumb a lift? Table a plan
in order to plan a table?
How can a slim chance and a fat chance
be the same, while a wise man and
wise guy are opposites? How can overlook
and oversee be opposites, while quite
a lot and quite a few are alike? How
can a person be “pretty ugly?”
How can the weather be hot as hell
one day and cold as hell another. Have
you noticed that we talk about certain
things only when they are absent? Have
you ever seen a horseful carriage
or a strapful gown? Met a sung hero or
experienced requited love? Have you
ever run into someone who was combobulated,
gruntled, ruly or peccable? And where
are all those people who *are* spring
chickens or who would actually hurt
a fly?
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 clock goes off by
going on. Why is “crazy man” an insult,
while to insert a comma and say “crazy,
man!” is a compliment (as when
applauding a jazz performance.)
English was invented by people, not
computers, 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. And why, when
I wind up my watch, I start it, but when I
wind up this essay, I end it.
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