The English Language Is So Hard To Learn

[alvino]

Reasons why the English language is so hard to learn:

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) After a number of injections my jaw got number.

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

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

21) 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.

[tso310]

Nice one. On its way around the office.

[moebius]

How about:

The Chaos

Dearest creature in creation,

Study English pronunciation.

I will teach you in my verse

Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse

I will keep you, Suzy, busy,

Make your head with heat grow dizzy.

Tear in eye, your dress will tear.

So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.

Just compare heart, beard, and heard,

Dies and diet, lord and word,

Sword and sward, retain and Britain.

(Mind the latter, how it's written)

Now I surely will not plague you

With such words as plaque and ague.

But be careful how you speak:

Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;

Cloven, oven, how and low,

Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.

Hear me say, devoid of trickery,

Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,

Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,

Exiles, similes, and reviles;

Scholar, vicar, and cigar,

Solar, mica, war and far;

One, anemone, Balmoral,

Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel

Gertrude, German, wind and mind,

Scene, Melpomene, mankind.

Billet does not rhyme with ballet,

Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.

Blood and flood are not like food.

Nor is mould like should and would.

Viscous, viscount, load and broad,

Toward, to forward, to reward.

And your pronunciation's OK

When you correctly say croquet.

Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,

Friend and fiend, alive and live.

Ivy, privy, famous clamour,

And enamour, rhyme with hammer.

River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb.

Crevice and device and aerie.

Face, but preface, not efface.

Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.

Large, but target, gin, give, verging,

Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.

Ear, but earn and wear and tear

Do not rhyme with here but ere.

Seven is right, but so is even,

Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,

Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,

Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.

Pronunciation - think of Psyche!

Is a paling stout and spikey?

Won't it make you lose your wits,

Writing greats and saying grits?

It's a dark abyss or tunnel:

Strewn with stone, stowed, solace, gunwale

Islington and Isle of Wight,

Housewife, verdict and indict.

Finally, which rhymes with enough?

Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?

Hiccough has the sound of cup.

My advice is to give up!

Dr. Gerald Nolst Trenite (1870-1946), a Dutch

observer of English