English

tom j

Active Member
Joined
Aug 15, 2004
I found this another car site...

The English Language

THIS IS GREAT!!! Read all the way to the end................ This took a lot of work to put together!!!
You think English is easy???

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'?
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That was great!

How about adding some more?

Why do you park in your driveway and drive on the parkway?
 
Gotta admit to that. English does look crazy to others.
But learning Spanish/French/Italian isn't so easy either.
Each sentence is constructed around a noun which takes on an either male or female form, when in reality buildings, cars, and inanimate objects have neither male nor female parts.
Then you have to form the sentence, and each verb or adverb changes its form, or the word changes entirely depending on what the noun is doing or how its doing something. And you have to change the sentence structure depending on whom you're addressing. To top that off, age is relative in forming a sentence about a person, and there really is no guide to where the line is between senorita and senora. Same with big and small. You change the noun based on the size of the object you describe.
If you refer to yourself in a sentence, you change the whole thing all over again.
Thats why its so tough to just go to another country with a pocket dictionary and ramble out coherent ideas. It just doesn't work, and they laugh at you. When you hear French, Spanish, Italian, and it sounds like they speak fast but don't really say much, its true. The whole set of romance languages is much more complicated than English. Hence why its easier for foreigners to learn English, and get 90% of it right, while us native English speakers can only hope for a 10-20% when attempting another language.
(My sister was a college English instruction major, and she will agree with me on this!)
Anyone that has studied Spanish beyond "Yo Quiero Taco Bell" knows what I mean...
 
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