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.
Anonymous
Some reasons to be grateful if you grew up speaking English;
1) The bandage was wound around the wound.
2) The farm was used to produce produce.
3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
4) We must polish the Polish furniture.
5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.
6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
7) There is no time like the present, he said it was time to present the present.
8) At the Army base, a bass was painted on the head of a bass drum.
9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
10) I did not object to the object.
11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
13) They were too close to the door to close it.
14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.
15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
18) After a number of Novocain injections, my jaw got number.
19) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.
20) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
21) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?
22) I spent last evening evening out a pile of dirt.
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?
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 wiseguy 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.
If Dad is Pop, how come! Mom isn’t Mop?
GO FIGURE! That’s American English.
unlike Sanskrit english made its own rules of pronounciation & Grammar in a different way based on the words derivated from
example CH is pronounced as ka wen the word is derived from greek example
character = karakter
CH is pronounced as sha wen the word is from french
ex champagne,chateau
similarly with singulars & plurals.
- via Some thing wrong -
Some Related Posts
February 17th, 2007 at 12:14 pm
Yeah, English is a weird language. But if you think of it, English is easier than most Asian languages.
[Reply]
Andy reply on August 25, 2008 11:25 am:
Actually, Asian languages only look hard because they use a completely different script. Your brain reads words, not letters, so it’s not hard to learn how to read chinese once you know how the symbols are made. Japanese is completely phonetic, so no ph=f crap.. and they use kanji so you don’t have two words that sound the same but mean something different looking the same too.
[Reply]
Worm reply on August 25, 2008 12:53 pm:
You’ve obviously never studied an Asian language. They’re for simpler than English.
[Reply]
July 24th, 2008 at 3:10 am
jajajaja
that is cool, well I guess spanish is the most difficult language to learn jajaja what do you think??
[Reply]
Andy reply on August 25, 2008 11:26 am:
I studied spanish for 3 years, and it made a lot more sense to me than english.
[Reply]
August 25th, 2008 at 6:29 am
There’s no doubt that the basics of English are easier to pick up than an awful lot of other languages.
Japanese, though, is easier to learn (the basics) than Polish. Christ, Polish is painful.
[Reply]
August 25th, 2008 at 7:23 am
I found this to be rather naive. It would take the most simple research to find out why each of these examples are the way they are. Instead of saying “Go Figure.” Put a little effort into it and “Go Google.”
I suggest, if you are interested in actually knowing why English is the way it is, that you read ‘The Mother Tongue’ by Bill Bryson.
English is like any other language, constantly evolving. It has brushed close to and melded with other languages and cultures and even been deliberately crafted into being.
Any CH that sounds like SH generally comes from French….therefore it’s not English.
Pop comes from Papa, and its equivalent is Mom (which comes from Mama). The only actual English for this is Father and Mother and more recently Dad. Papa is technically French from Greek.
Noses don’t technically run. That’s just commonly used bad grammar. The mucus runs, just like a river runs. Feet don’t actively smell, they have a bad scent (stench).
And you can amend things. You can amend your words. And yes, you can walk up to somebody and and say, “I would like to amend my action.”
Other words are general terms, like Ring. It refers more to an enclosure than a shape. We have a word for a round shape, it’s called a Circle.
Those are just a few I picked out to respond to, but ALL of them could be solved with the simplest of research.
Sorry to be the party pooper but this joke is just misinformation…not really funny if it’s implying untruths.
[Reply]
August 25th, 2008 at 8:31 am
I’ve got English down, it was my first language, and I do pretty well in Spanish. ^_^ Currently also working on Latin.
[Reply]
August 25th, 2008 at 10:59 am
the Dad to Pop, Mom to Mop example doesn’t work because Mom to Mop would be Dad to Dop…
Though a thorough look at the English language reveals why it’s so tough to learn but it can be done through determination.
[Reply]
August 25th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
“unlike Sanskrit english made its own rules of pronounciation & Grammar in a different way based on the words derivated from”
Also, English evolves because English speakers create their own version of the language from generation to generation.
This was an excellent post. As a native English speaker, it’s easy to forget how weird it seems to people who are learning the language. Your perspective is fresh and right on!
I would love to learn Chinese, but I’m afraid to start! I tried Japanese but didn’t have enough opportunity to practice and gave up. It’s a pretty neat language, though. I couldn’t even begin to learn to write and read in an Asian language.
Thank you for this post.
katie
[Reply]
August 25th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
I think you are spanish and think too high of yourself. Go learn chinese to see whats dificult…
[Reply]
August 25th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
English is an amazing language because it is always evolving, unlike most other languages which are set in their ways.
Come on, what other language has pages of synonyms for single words?
[Reply]