Here's one I received from a teacher buddy:
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, two geese. So one moose, two
meese?
One index, two 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? 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 by ship?
Have
noses that run and feet that smell? Park on driveways and drive in
parkways?
How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man
and a
wise guy are opposities? 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?
How 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 there are all those people who ARE spring chickens or who
would ACTUALLY hurt a fly?
You have to marvel at the unique legacy of a language in which your
house
can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling 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, isn't a race at all).
That
is why, when the stars are out, they are viable, 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?!
________________
mph
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