The English Language

[eau_xplain 2]

My husband sent this to me as he knows how often I've complained about the rules of the language being so confusing!

Can you read these right the first time?

1) The bandage was wound around the wound.

2) The farm was used to produce produce.

3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.

4) We must polish the Polish furniture.

5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.

6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert. !

7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present .

8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.

9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.

10) I did not object to the object.

11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.

12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row .

13) They were too close to the door to close it.

14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.

15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.

16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.

17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.

18) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.

19) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.

20) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

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"

You lovers of the English language might enjoy this .

There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that is "UP."

It's easy to understand UP, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP ? At a meeting, why does a topic come UP? Why do we speak UP and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report ?

We call UP our friends. And we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver, we warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen. We lock UP the house and some guys fix UP the old car. At other times the little word has real special meaning. People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses. To be dressed is one thing but to be dressed UP is special.

And this UP is confusing: A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP. We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night.

We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP! To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP , look the word UP in the dictionary. In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4th of the page and can add UP to about thirty definitions. If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used. It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don't give UP, you may wind UP with a hundred or more. When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP. When the sun comes out we say it is clearing UP .

When it rains, it wets the earth and often messes things UP.

When it doesn't rain for awhile, things dry UP ..

One could go on and on, but I'll wrap it UP , for now my time is UP, so......... Time to shut UP!

[almaty 19]

i like that....

[Carola 0]

[nijusjaanu 0]

i love the english language (i want to be a novelist), but you're right: it's absolutely rediculous most of the time. once you realize that a lot of words and uses in english are borrowed from other languages, it's easier to stomach how weird it works sometimes.

when we first started going out, nizzar sent me that email and i got a kick out of it

[Ladylethal 12]

I was laughing my ### off with this!!! (which btw, is another funny thing )

English was easy to learn, but if you stop to think about all those little things, you do find it funny.

Portuguese has it´s little things as well, we had a text written about, like the one you did there, for those brazilians out there, it´s Verissimo´s "Pois é" cronic, and it´s really funny indeed.

[Ana Paula 2]

auhauahuaha

some things like in portuguese... auahuah

so funny

[MrMrsKnight 0]

Seeing that Portuguese is one of the most difficult languages to learn (not even people born here know how to speak it properly sometimes... too many variations), it was very easy for me to learn and understand how the English language works.

I love Portuguese and I've always loved everything about it and it annoys me when people keep making the same mistakes over and over again.

I also love English and had a great time learning how to speak it! I had started my english course only two months before I met Dave online and we could talk perfectly well..... one month after that we started talking on the phone and we didn't have a hard time understanding each other either.

He (and his family and friends) say that they can hardly notice my accent now and that sometimes it's impossible to notice.

I guess I was lucky!

[Garfield fan 0]

English is difficult for me, especially the pronounciation. Indonesian is very very easy, not so many rules and you just say it "as it is". English has many different ways of saying the vowels, depending on where it's located in the word and what other alphabets are in there... The countable and uncountable nouns also drive me crazy !! And how should I know that there is no such thing as "cookings" nor "informations" but there is only "mathematics" not "mathematic" ??? English sucks !!

[pedroh 21]

the craziest explanation of english language is how GHOTI can sound as the word Fish

[Jasman0717 9]