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Teacher's Digest
13-Let's face it --
English is a crazy language!
1-There's
no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor
pine in pineapple.
2-
English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries
in France. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which
aren't sweet, are meat.
3-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.
4-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?
5-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?
6-If teachers taught, why
didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables,
what does a humanitarian eat? If you wrote a letter,
perhaps you bote your tongue?
7-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?
8-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?
9-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?
10- Have you ever run
into someone who was discombobulated, gruntled, ruly or
peccable? And where are all those people who ARE spring
chickens or who would ACTUALLY hurt a fly?
11-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.
12-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).
13-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!
(This essay has been
attributed to Richard Lederer.)
Source:www.webenglishteacher.com
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