The English Language
This a poem from Cyber Salt that someone foward. If you are English Language learners, share more paradoxes like this.
Lets face it English is a stupid language. There is no egg in the eggplant No ham in the hamburger And neither pine nor apple in the pineapple. English muffins were not invented in England French fries were not invented in France.
We sometimes take English for granted But if we examine its paradoxes we find that Quicksand takes you down slowly Boxing rings are square And a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.
If writers write, how come fingers don't fing. If the plural of tooth is teeth Shouldn't the plural of phone booth be phone beeth If the teacher taught, Why didn't the preacher praught.
If a vegetarian eats vegetables What on earth does a humanitarian eat!? Why do people recite at a play Yet play at a recital? Park on driveways and Drive on parkways How can the weather be as hot as hell on one day And as cold as hell on another
You have to marvel at the unique lunacy Of a language where a house can burn up as It burns down And in which you fill in a form By filling it out And a bell is only heard once it goes!
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 it is that when I wind up my watch It starts But when I wind up this poem It ends.
13 Answers
However amusing, many of Ian's examples simply reflect the fact that there has never been any substantial/systematic revision of orthography. A lot of the word pairs that are spelled differently were also (at one time) pronounced differently. Conversely some of the examples of same spelling, different pronunciation reflect a change in pronunciation that was never imitated in the spelling (to use one of the early pairs mentioned, "wound" (meaning an injury) was, in Shakespeare's time pronounced like the modern sound of the verb meaning to coil the spring tighter (as with a watch /clock).
In this sense, languages that have a (Royal) Academy are at an advantage because they then mandate gradual orthographic changes to reflect the (inevitable) shifts in pronunciation. Other languages (such as Vietnamese and Korean) have had major overhauls to their orthography (that were applied as sweeping reforms, rather than gradually) but, in both cases the revisions were sufficiently recent that there has not been enough time for further serious drift in pronunciation.
Unfortunately, the more successful (widely used) a language is, the more difficult it becomes to make major changes to it (things already in print, speakers who have already learned to cope with the inconsistencies).
If you ever feel stupid, then just read on.
If you've learned to speak fluent English, you must be a genius!
This little treatise on the lovely language we share is only for the brave.
Peruse at your leisure, English lovers. (some are shown elaswhere but repetition helps)
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.
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?
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, but are meat.
Quicksand works 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?
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? Is it an odd, or an end?
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"?
Trouble with English Pronunciation?
This is why. The Chaos. It’s not your fault.
Dearest creature in creation
Studying English pronunciation
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horses and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy;
Tear in eye, your hair you’ll tear,
So shall I. Oh! Hear my prayer,
Pray console you loving poet.
Make my coat look new, dear, sew it;
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).
Mad has the sound of bad,
Say, said; pay, paid; laid but plaid,
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as vague and ague,
But do be careful how you speak:
Say break, steak, but bleak and streak,
Previous, precious; fuchsia, via;
Snipe, pipe, recipe and choir,
Cloven, oven; how and low,
Script, receipt; shoe, poem, toe;
Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter and Terpsishore;
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles;
Exiles, similes, reviles;
Wholly, holy; signal, signing;
Thames, examining, combining;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far.
Desire, desirable – admirable, admire;
Lumber, plumber, bier but brier;
Chatham, brougham; renown but known.
Knowledge; done but gone and tone,
One, anemone; Balmoral;
Kitchen, lichen; laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German; wind and mind;
Scene, Melpomene, mankind;
Tortoise, turquoise, chamois-leather,
Reading, Reading, heathen, heather.
Billet does not end like ballet;
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet:
Good and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like would and should,
Viscous, viscount, load and broad;
Toward, forward but reward;
Rounded, wounded; grieve and sieve;
Friend and fiend; alive and live;
Liberty, library, heave and heaven;
Rachel, ache, moustache; eleven.
We say hallowed but allowed;
People, leopard; towed but vowed;
Mark the difference moreover,
Between mover, cover, over;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise;
Chalice, but polite and lice.
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label;
Petal, penal, and canal;
Wait, surmise, plait, promise, pal;
Suit, suite, ruin; circuit, conduit
Rhymes with shirk it and beyond it.
Timber, climber, bullion, lion,
Muscle, muscular, goal, iron,
Worm and storm; chaos and chair;
Senator, spectator, mayor,
Ivy, privy, famous, clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer;
Pussy, hussy and possess,
Desert, but dessert, and address.
Golf, wolf, countenance, lieutenants
Hoist in lieu of flags, left pennants.
River, rival; tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Soul but foul and gaunt and aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, but grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now, first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger;
Real, seal, mauve, gauze and gauge;
Marriage, foliage, mirage, age.
Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, sloth;
Job, blossom, bosom oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual,
Youth, south, southern cleanse and clean;
Doctrine, turpentine, marine;
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion with battalion.
Sally with ally; yes, ye
Eye, I, aye, whey, key, quay;
Say aver, but ever, fever;
Neither, leisure, skein, receiver;
Never guess, it is not safe –
We say calves and valves, half but Ralph;
Heron, granary, canary;
Crevice and device and eyrie;
Face and preface, but efface;
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass;
Large, but target, gin, give, verging;
Ought, out, joust, and scour, but scourging;
Ear but earn and weir and tear
Do of course rhyme with ‘here’ and there’;
Seven is right but so is even;
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen;
Monkey, donkey, clear and jerk;
Asp, grasp, wasp; and cork and work.
Pronunciation – think of psyche –
Is a paling stout and spiky;
Don’t you think so, reader, rather,
Saying lather, bather, father?
Finally what rhymes with enough,
Though, through, plough, cough, hough, or tough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup ….
My advice is: GIVE IT UP!
Author unknown
How wierd! I just saw this poem and was going to post something like this too! Here's some slang that can also sound wierd to a non-native (this is American slang). "Cool" means something like "popular" and "hot" can mean good-looking. So, if someone is good looking and popular, they are hot and cool.
Brush up on Your English Pronunciation
I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, laugh and through?
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps?
Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird.
And dead: it’s said like bed, not bead –
For goodness sake don’t call it ‘deed’!
Watch out for meat and great and threat
They rhyme with suite or sweet & straight or hate & sweat or debt.
A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, or broth in brother,
And here is not a match for there,
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear,
And then there’s dose and rose and lose –
Just look them up – and goose and choose,
And cork and work, and card and ward,
And front and font and word and sword,
And do and go and thwart and cart –
Come, come, I’ve hardly made a start!
A dreadful language? Man alive,
I’d mastered it when I was five!
this explains the irony of the english language in a creative and crazy way. This is why english is hard to learn. Ex. there, their and they're all sound the same but are used for three different things. They're is thye are. There is used for location and their is used for posestion.
I feel so lucky being born into English. I can't imagine having to learn it!. For me, the subjunctive in Spanish is challenge enough!
Me siento afortunado que haya nacido en entorno inglés. No puedo imaginar aprenderlo del principio. Me ha desafído suficiente el lenguaje castellano! Para mí, el subjuntivo es un reto abrumador!
Wow! If English is so hard to learn as a second language, then those of us having a hard time learning Spanish must just be idiots!!!!!!!!!!
Here is another example of English irregularity. Comb, Tomb, Bomb. Three different sounds for the letter O.
Someone told me that phrasal verbs are confusing.
Man, I'm sick of people putting down English, other languages have inconsistencies too you know.
I am forced to wonder how many examples like that exist in Spanish?
Great thread, wonderful examples in posts.
This is an important reminder for teachers of English language learners: be patient, speak slowly and pronounce clearly!
SilentHero,
Don't take this the wrong way but chill-out a little, this is just a fun way to show how English can be a tricky language. Most languages have little nuances in them and if you have any examples of other languages please post them. Hint: that's how we learn things!! 
