[Veeveo] English for today

Title: English is a Crazy Language :-))))

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Let's face it -- English is a crazy language!

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.
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 the 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 didn't preacher
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 on parkways?
How can a slim chance and a fat chance be
the same, while a wise man and a 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?
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 dis-combobulated, grunted,
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 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 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!
.

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