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Friday 15 May 2015

The Lunacy of the English language

It's the lunacy of the English language. 
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A retired teacher of English once wrote: 'English is a crazy language.
 
There is no egg in eggplants, 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 it's 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, two geese. So one moose, two meese?.Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? . If teachers taught, why don'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 .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, is not a race at all.

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