English Language Enigmas

Previously Published on October 21, 2011 at Multiply website
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Sometimes, I wonder.  Take for instance, yesterday, when I was watching France 24 TV news.  They have this female French correspondent, reporting in English about the capture of Gaddafi or Qaddafi or Khadafi.  I could not understand a damn word she was saying.  Couldn't they get someone who speaks unbroken English?  Who are the best news reporters/correspondents?  RT & Al Jazeera, if you ask me.  I did not include my favorite BBC since English English is their mother tongue.  That's the problem with the snotty French people - they speak French only.  One time I was ordering food in a French bistro - the menu is very misleading and the waiter snotty and tempermental.  Hey, I would like to know what I'm ordering.  I don't like escargot and frogs.  No snails and frogs for me.  I am, after all, a carnivorous.

Lib

From: jpl
Subject: FW: [usc_che_class_75] Fw: English Language Enigmas (no, not enemas)
Date: Sat, 3 Sep 2011 09:19:23 -0500

How true !!!!!!!!!

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 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 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? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth, beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices? 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 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?

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.

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. That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.

PS. - Why doesn't 'Buick' rhyme with 'quick' ?