I read this article many years ago, and just recently remembered about it. So I googled it and post it here for the benefit of those un-enlightened ones. Confirms my belief that English-speaking people are weird folks. Everybody should speak Swahili.
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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. 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? Park on driveways
and drive on parkways? 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? 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?
English is a silly language — it doesn’t know if it is coming or going.
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