We'll begin with a box,
and the plural is boxes, but the plural of ox becomes 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 speak 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 there 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 didn't 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?
We ship by truck but
send cargo by ship... We have noses that run and feet that
smell. We park in a driveway and drive in a parkway. And 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.
And in closing..........
If Father is Pop, how come Mother's not Mop???
