THE BEAUTIFUL ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you
On hiccough, thorough, cough 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 is 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 and straight and debt)

A moth is not a moth in mother
Nor both in bother, 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 font and front 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!
[Eight actually, but it didn't rhyme! ;-)]
x0x0x

Froggy "Frisky Frog" - 15 years, 9 months, 9 days ago

Let's face it, English is a crazy language. (Continued)


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, two geese -- one moose, two meese? And one index, two indices?
Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend, that you comb through annals of history but not through a single annal? If you have a collection 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 a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? If you wrote a letter, did you bote your tongue?

Sometimes I think all 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.
Cool is hot, and hot is cool ?

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 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 want to stop my computer I press Start and when I wind up my watch, I start it, but when I wind up this essay, I end it?

Froggy "Frisky Frog" - 15 years, 9 months, 10 days ago

As others seem to advertise in Tales, I'm not one to buck the trend - Much ;-)
VISIT MY LITTLE SHOP where you will assured of a WARM WELCOME.

#~CAFETERIA~#
*NEW MENU *#Free to Gourmet shoppers#
Spider Soup with Snail Crouton, Slug with Nettle sauce, Slug with Cricket side salad, Compost Coffee, Worm Sandwiches, Fly Pie, Aphid & Spit, Pea Pod Pie, Mealy Grub & Slime Compote, Spider and Web julienne, Stagnant Tea - all available 24/7/365 !
** I have also added a Croak Room where you may hang your Leather Jackets.

FOR YOU BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE WHO BUY FROM ME - AND/OR THUMB MY TALES -
A HEART FELT 'THANK YOU'. x0x0x

See me also at - http://apps.facebook.com/friendsforsale/users/show/28737463

Froggy "Frisky Frog" - 15 years, 11 months, 15 days ago

Last August (2007) I went to spend a week end with friends in the north of Scotland.
On the Saturday night we went to visit a friend, a retained fireman, when I had a sudden heart attack !
Being in the job he was in, he immediately called out the paramedics but also his colleague fire officers, who arrived with breathing apparatus (oxygen helping me to relax).
The paramedics quickly wired me up to the ECG machine - the results you can see below !
**(If you click on it, you will see a heart attack in progress !)

However, what was more important to me at the time was, being stuck out in the middle of nowhere in a tiny village, the quickest way to hospital, was by air ambulance !
So that is how I achieved a longed for ambition, a ride in a helicopter hahahaha.
*Not that I'd recommend this as a way of getting what you want !
Froggy "Frisky Frog" - 15 years, 11 months, 17 days ago