English

" 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, 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 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 preachers praught?
• If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?

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?
• 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?
• Have 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 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 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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