Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 15:49:09 -0400 (EDT)
From: Would Row
Subject: BLAGUES-L: English is a crazy language

Date: Wed, 27 Aug 1997 17:53:57 -0500
From: Karen Stanley

This has been around (in one version or another) for a long time,
but I always like it.
Karen
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     Lets 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 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 the annals of history but not through a single 
     annal?  And 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? If you wrote a letter, 
     perhaps you bote you tongue?
     
     Sometimes I think all the English speakers 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 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?
     For  example, have you ever seen a horseful carriage or a strapful 
     gown? Met a sung hero or experienced requitted 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.
     
     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). 
     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.