Let's face it,
English is a stupid language.
There is no egg in the eggplant
No ham in the hamburger
And neither pine nor apple in the pineapple.
English muffins were not invented in England.
French fries were not invented in France.
We sometimes take English for granted
But if we examine its paradoxes we find that
Quicksand takes you down slowly
Boxing rings are square
And a guinea pig is neither from
Guinea nor is it a pig.
If writers write, how come fingers don't fing.
If the plural of tooth is teeth
Shouldn't the plural of phone booth be phone beeth
If the teacher taught,
Why didn't the preacher praught.
If a vegetarian eats vegetables
What the heck does a humanitarian eat!?
Why do people recite at a play
Yet play at a recital?
Park on driveways and
Drive on parkways
You have to marvel at the unique lunacy
Of a language where a house can burn up as
It burns down
And in which you fill in a form
By filling it out
And a bell is only heard once it goes!
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 it is that when I wind up my watch
It starts
But when I wind up this observation
It ends.
1 comment:
there are good reasons for all of that. i'm sure of it. probably the people of hamburg have no ham in them eitiher. wait...or, yes, they probably do.
at least in english "she" and "they" and "you" have their own individual words (not the same word for all three!), and "he eats" sounds different than "he is" and why do you call a faucet a rooster?...
i could go on: ) but it's true. logic, we ain't got it.
in some ways learning german has to be easier than learning english, cuz if you don't know the word for something, and you just make something up, like "The Thing That Makes Things Into Smaller Things" you may even guess correctly!! on the other hand, what would have been a silly guess in english, sounds perfectly serious in german and no one laughs.
did you know the way we do math is different? i've been looking at my man's worksheets for his students, and i said "where's your long division?" and he pointed to it. we do it and write it completely differently. (see wiki on this - it's nuts!) we also do long subtraction totally differently. ("long" means dividing or subtracting large numbers into/from each other.)
yesterday i found out the musical notes are different too. what the heck?! talk about illogic. what comes between A and C in the alphabet? (hint: my name starts with it) and on the musical scale?
the quasi-logical europeans say "CDEFGAHC". i almost fell down in shock.
oh well. at least i know what's on my sandwich now. thanks to your sister responding to my post this week. i honestly thought "puten" meant chicken, for like, a year.
oh, one more thing, since i was leading my horse in the snow yesterday, and it was very cold out, i said "brrrrr". that's what we say when we're cold. my horse kept walking. (we say "whoa" to stop a horse.)
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