English is a crazy language
Source of Recipe
old clipping
Recipe Introduction
Let's face it - English is a crazy language.
List of Ingredients
There is neither 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 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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