English Is A Crazy Language
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 moose, 2 meese? 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 don't preachers praught?
- If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?
- 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 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 wise guy are opposites?
- How can overlook and oversee be opposites, while quite a lot and quite a few are alike?
- 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 goes off by going on.
- 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 list, I end it.
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