Thread: English?

I don't know where to post this and I also don't know who wrote it (so don't ask me if you
find mistakes there!), but I thought it is funny and worth posting here. No wonder English is 'hard' and 'confusing' - well at least for me :oops:

As some people surely have noticed, my command of the English grammar is not that exiting, so this is kind of a comforting read for me.

Four All Who Reed and Right

We'll begin with a box, and the plural is boxes;
but the plural of ox became oxen not oxes.

One fowl is a goose, but two are called geese,
yet the plural of moose should never be meese.

You may find a lone mouse or a nest full of mice;
yet the plural of house is houses, not hice.

If the plural of man is always called men,
why shouldn't the plural of pan be called pen?

If I spoke of my foot and show you my feet,
and I give you a boot, would a pair be called beet?

If one is a tooth and a whole set are teeth,
why shouldn't the plural of booth be called beeth?

Then one may be that, and three would be those,
yet hat in the plural would never be hose, and the plural of cat
is cats, not cose.

We speak of a brother and also of brethren,
but though we say mother, we never say methren.

Then the masculine pronouns are he, his and him,
but imagine the feminine, she, shis and shim.

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.

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?

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 not preachers praught?

If a vegetarian eats vegetables,
what does a humanitarian eat?

Sometimes, I think all the folks who grew up speaking English
should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane.

In what other 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.

Just as we are in the topic of language, in another posting Milan and Jimbo talked about mixing up languages (when one speaks more than one languanges). I surely can understand this as I do it also. My aunt and I called it bahasa gado-gado :lol:

There is currently a visiting Indonesian high school teacher from Kalimantan here, she wanted to know about environmental and sustainability education programmes and initiatives we do here, to learn and to take inspirations (if you can call it that) to take back home. I suggested to her sponsor for her to attend a Thematic Interpretation Communication - sustainability workshops just held these past two days (by a very entertaining Professor Sam Ham from the University of Idaho USA). I was there with her in case she needs help understanding and for translating. But, I found out that I am 'incapable' of fluently explaining (in talking) high level complex ideas in Indonesian (many academic terms, terminologies and words in Indonesian simply escaped me :oops: ). Hmm, might be time to sharpen my level of Indonesian. :idea:

Well enjoy the 'joke'
Cheers
Kadek