A forward from Lawrence

English is a Crazy Language!

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 blouse, 2 blice?

Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend, that
you comb through annals of
history but not a single annal? 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 don't preachers praught? If you wrote a letter,
perhaps you bote your tongue?
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? Park on driveways and drive on
parkways?

How can a "slim chance" and a "fat chance" be the same, while a "wise
man" and "wise guy" are opposites?
How can overlook and oversee be opposites, while "quite a lot" and "quite
a few" are alike? How can the
weather be "hot as hell" one day and "cold as hell" another?

Have you noticed that we talk about certain things only when they are
absent? Have you ever seen a
horseful carriage or a strapful gown? Met a sung hero or experienced
requited love? Have you ever run
into someone who was combobulated, gruntled, ruly or peccable? And where
are all those people who are
spring chickens or who would actually hurt a fly?

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 clock
goes off by going on.

English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the
creativity of the human race (which,
of course, isn't a race at all). That is why, when the stars are out,
they are visible, but when the
lights are out, they are invisible. And why, when I wind up my watch, I
start it, but when I wind up
this essay, I end it?

Did you know that "verb" is a noun?

How can you look up words in a dictionary if you can't spell them?

If a word is misspelled in a dictionary, how would we ever know?

If Webster wrote the first dictionary, where did he find the words?

If you've read a book, you can reread it. But wouldn't this also mean
that you would have to "member"
somebody in order to remember them?

In Chinese, why are the words for crisis and opportunity the same?

Is it a coincidence that the only 15 letter word that can be spelled
without repeating a letter is
uncopyrightable?

Shouldn't there be a shorter word for "monosyllabic"?

What is another word for "thesaurus"?

Where do swear words come from?

Why can't you make another word using all the letters in "anagram"?

Why do people use the word "irregardless"?

Why do some people type "cool" as "kewl?"

Why do we say something's out of order when its broken but we never say
in of order when it works?

Why does "cleave" mean both split apart and stick together?

Why does "slow down" and "slow up" mean the same thing?

Why does flammable and inflammable mean the same thing?

Why does X stand for a kiss and O stand for a hug?

Why doesn't "onomatopoeia" sound like what it is?

Why don't we say "why" instead of "how come"?

Why is "crazy man" an insult, while to insert a comma and say "Crazy,
man!" is a compliment?

Why is abbreviation such a long word?

Why is dyslexic so hard to spell?

Why is it so hard to remember how to spell MNEMONIC?

Why is it that no word in the English language rhymes with month, orange,
silver, or purple?

Why is it that the word "gullible" isn't in the dictionary?

Why is the alphabet in that order? Is it because of that song?

Why isn't "palindrome" spelled the same way backwards?

Why isn't phonetic spelled the way it sounds?

English is a crazy language! (yet somehow I majored in it!)