FDR in Hell Presents:
The English Lesson
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.
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.
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 other 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.
~Author Unknown~
That was good.
And we Drive on the Parkway and Park on the Driveway. FFS!
That was fun. People I’ve worked with in non-English speaking countries told me that English is a very hard language to learn because of things like those noted above. Also how the same word is not pronounced the same and doesn’t even mean the same thing. I can “read” a book or have my palm “read” (not red) – read is sometimes pronounced “reed” or sometimes “red” which has nothing to do with the color.
Generals eat in a private mess and privates eat in a General mess.
I cook bacon, but bake cookies.
Now you understand my sometime nonsensical comments?
@ Diogenes
I love to make nonsensical comments or vagaries that, after thought about, often make sense to the uninitiated. My daughter and I unintentionally communicate with them and then start cracking up because we each know what the other means.
Poor Brad
A murder of crows
A congress of apes
Humanitarians eat taxes.
Friendly neighbors will help you raise a barn.
Hateful neighbors will raze that barn to the ground.
That’s not the only word pair I have a problem with. But imagine if you hired somebody to raise a new barn for you and they thought you meant the other word, so they burn your other barn to the ground. Yes, thanks 0bama, there are people who are that stupid in this world.
That was Bad! Interpret that.
The reason our (now Americanized) English is so rich is because it contains remnants and accretions from other languages.
This owing to the repeated invasions of Britain by Romans, Angles, Saxons, Danes, Normans etc.
This also accounts for some of the oddities noted in the OP.
Jefferson suggested a return to Anglo Saxon.
Our language continues to evolve, adding to its enrichment. (Note Spanglish and computerese.)
………..
Be on the lookout for some Arabic in the near future.
And then there’s Engrish.
FDR in Hell has had a long time to think about this. Most likely Eleanor has given him much to think about.
I enjoy the play on words the English language has given us. It does make you wonder what they were thinking when many of these words came into existence.
In the immortal words of Jinx the cat to Pixie and Dixie, “I hate meeces to pieces.” I love the English language and all of its marvelous creativity and endless alliterations.
sleuth of bears
parliament of owls
I like how these comments started out as a discussion of the vagaries of English grammar and then expanded to include something completely different – i.e., animal collective names (e.g., “a prickle of porcupines”).
🙂
It’s not the language so much as it is the alphabet. If we get rid of a few letters, things become much easier as demonstrated in this short clip.
https://youtu.be/fPzAABMozs0
Have you ever been pricked by a porcupine? That sounds almost obscene doesn’t it! I haven’t but I know several dogs who were stupid enough to attack a porcupine and attempted to bite it and ended up with a mouth and nose full of prickly quills and at least one car with a couple of flat tires from running over one of the prickly critters.
Thanks Old Oaks for the good laugh this morning. And I’ll up you with a Knights who say Knee/nee from Monty Python. I loved the Spike Jones music at the end as well.
How come the word bastard is pronounced bas terd rather than bas tard? Bas tard sounds like a retarded bass and don’t even get me started on bass, a low tone or base as in baseball. Don’t you just love the English language.
A cunning linguist one is not that wants simplicity of spelling and sound.
I laugh to meself all the time thinking of the poor bastards trying to learn idiomatic American English.
Why for do we “wash up” and “scrub down?”
Thanks for sharing that.