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?
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.
P.S. Why doesn’t “buick” rhyme with “quick”?