EXPLORE SOME ENGLISH LANGUAGE PARADOXES.
Quicksand is slow acting, 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 do not 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. So one moose, two meese? One index, two indices? One 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 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 (or a hot chick and a cool chick), 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.
Unknown "my heart" Esoteric
- 16 years, 5 months, 13 days ago