Ah........English

[lvdkeyes]

ONLY THE BRITISHERS COULD HAVE INVENTED THIS LANGUAGE

We'll begin with a box, and the plural is boxes,

But the plural of ox becomes oxen, not oxes.

One fowl is a goose, but two are called geese,

Yet the plural of moose should never be meese.

You may find a lone mouse or a nest full of mice,

Yet the plural of house is houses, not hice.

If the plural of man is always called men,

Then shouldn't the plural of pan be called pen?

If I speak of my foot and show you my feet,

And I give you a boot, would a pair be called beet?

If one is a tooth and a whole set are teeth,

Why shouldn't the plural of booth be called beeth?

Then one may be that, and three would be those,

Yet hat in the plural would never be hose,

And the plural of cat is cats, not cose.

We speak of a brother and also of brethren,

But though we say mother, we never say methren.

Then the masculine pronouns are he, his and him,

But imagine the feminine: she, shis and shim!

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 ..

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?

Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend.

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 folks who grew up speaking English

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?

We ship by truck but send cargo by ship.

We have noses that run and feet that smell.

We park in a driveway and drive in a parkway.

And 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.

And, in closing, if Father is Pop, how come Mother's not Mop?

I WOULD LIKE TO ADD THAT IF PEOPLE FROM POLAND ARE CALLED POLES THEN

PEOPLE FROM HOLLAND SHOULD BE HOLES AND THE GERMANS GERMS!!!

[Bob]

I've always felt sorry for anybody who had to try to learn English. I'm still trying to learn Thai but, in spite of my difficulties (mainly lack of retention ability due to age), I can at least say that the Thai language rules are a hell of lot more consistent than what English offers.

[WannaGo]

When I was in the military years ago, I took the Defense Language Aptitude Battery to see about going to language school. The Army had languages arranged by simplest to most difficult, and your score determined where on the list you landed...for example, if you had the highest score, you could take any language on the list...if you had a medium score, you could take any of the bottom half of the languages, etc.

Flemish was listed as the easiest language to learn, while Chinese, Russian and Arabic were the most difficult. English was considered the equivalent of the three most difficult for a non-native speaker. I always figured Chinese would be the hardest because there are so many words that are written and and pronounced similarly, but have different meanings depending on the intonation.

By the way lvdkeyes, where'd you find that bit? I like it.

[lvdkeyes]

It was sent to me by a Malaysian friend.

[eleothegreat]

That's a pretty well - circulated email here in the Philippines.

Lucky me, I learned English before I even turned one (true!) haha. It was my first language, even if I was born and raised here in the Philippines. I Blame it on my mom and my over - achieving nanny (who is now in the United States, by the way). I only learned Cebuano (a filipino dialect) when I was four years old when my nanny left us for two years to take a break and a new nanny who couldn't speak English took her place...

[WannaGo]

I was raised speaking redneck. Didn't learn to speak English until I was about seven or eight.