Re: English is Such a Wacky Language, by Peter Heinlein

On Wed, 12 Dec 2007 21:04:20 +0100, nospam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (J.
J. Lodder) wrote:

Amethyst Deceiver <spam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

J. J. Lodder wrote:
Donna Richoux <trio@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

<piotrek.niesluchowski@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Lately I've found an interesting essay by Peter Heinlein and I
thought you might want to read it, so here it is :)

ENGLISH IS SUCH A WACKY LANGUAGE
This interesting text was used by VOA's Peter Heinlein in the
introduction to his lecture (to be printed in the upcoming issue).
There's 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.

[snip rest]

The only thing interesting is that people continue to steal Richard
Lederer's words and claim them as their own. As he says at his site:

http://www.verbivore.com/arc_ceng.htm

Here's an excerpt from the opening chapter in my Crazy
English: the Ultimate Joy Ride Through Our Language
(Pocket Books, 1989). If you see this floating around
the Net unattributed, please suggest to the
webmaster of that site that the material be properly
cited.

From the rest:
===
In this unreliable English tongue, greyhounds aren't always grey (or
gray); panda bears and koala bears aren't bears (they're
marsupials);...
===
from which we can conclude that his knowledge of zoology
is limited to the fact that there isn't a zoo in it.

The panda definitely is a bear, (family Ursidae)
not a marsupial like the koala.

Not all pandas are bears.

The 'panda bear' is.

It's the "giant panda", not the "panda bear" although it does
appear to be a member of th ursidae family. Calling it a "panda
bear" would be like calling a tiger a "tiger cat".

The other panda (which is not called a 'panda bear')
isn't a marsupial either.

Nor is it a bear, as it is apparently not a member of the ursidae
family. Which makes one wonder how it (the red panda, aka lesser
panda) and the giant panda can both be pandas.

Furthermore, our Mr Lederer
is suffering from a fundamental misunderstanding:
there is no reason at all why that what native speakers of English
call a 'bear' should coincide with what biologists understand
by a member of the Ursidae family.

What's in a name? A rose by any other name ...

--
************* DAVE HATUNEN (hatunen@xxxxxxx) *************
* Tucson Arizona, out where the cacti grow *
* My typos & mispellings are intentional copyright traps *
.

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