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...and "Can you think of another one?"
Not my doing, it came from an Author Anonymous Email...