Let's face it - English is a crazy language. T here 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? 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 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? 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, is not a race at all.
Your email of the day from Col. Updraft
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