The English Language Why the English Language Is Hard To Learn
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) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.
8) A bass was painted on the head of the 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 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?
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 nor 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. 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 other 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 ever 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. hmmmmmmm........