Tuesday, October 23, 2007

This was sent to me today.....

You Think English is Easy? It's one of the most difficult languages to learn! Can you read these right the first time?
01) The bandage was wound around the wound.
02) The farm was used to produce produce.
03) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
04) We must polish the Polish furniture.
05) He could lead if he would get the lead out.
06) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
07) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.
08) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.
09) 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 line.
16) To help wit h planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
18) Upon seeing the tear in the painting, I shed a tear.
19) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
20) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

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 nor 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, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indixes? If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? 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? 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 bethe 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.
PS. - Why doesn't Buick rhyme with quick ?You lovers of the English language might enjoy this.
There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that is UP. It's easy to understand UP, meaning toward the sky or toward the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP? At a meeting, why does a topic come UP? Why do we speak UP and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to thesecretary to write UP a report?We call UP our friends. We use something to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver, warm UP the leftovers, and clean UP the kitchen. We lock UP the house and some guys fix UP the old car . At other times the little word has real special meaning. People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses. To be dressed is one thing but to be dressed UP is special .And this UP is confusing: A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP. We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night.We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP! To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP, look the word UP in the dictionary. In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4th of the page and can add UP to about thirty definitions. If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used. It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don't give UP, you may wind UP with a hundred or more.When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP. When the sun comes out we say it is clearing UP. When it rains, it wets the earth and oftenmesses things UP.When it doesn't rain for awhile, things dry UP.We could go on, but I'll wrap it UP, for now my time is UP, so: Time to shut UP!

15 comments:

Vicky said...

I have a copy of this in my classroom and I've been using this for years with my students when they moan, "Why do I have to learn Spanish, it's so hard! English is the easiest language to learn!" Doh! No it's not!

Donna Sensor Thomas said...

My former sister-in-law is Hungarian and she once told me that she found English easy to learn. (She also speaks French, German and Russian.)

Michelle (Heist) Edwards said...

Kristen, I think you have too much time on your hands. Where ever did you find that???? All of it is pretty much true.

steve said...

Donna, you'd have to speak German to think English was easy - didn't English evolve from German?

Anyways, for all intensive purposes I think we should all take a different tack and not abuse English any farther. ;)

kristen said...

michelle, actually I thought I would, (have more time on my hands) with trisha at preschool now 2 mornings a week, but i've never been busier!! this was an e-mail from one of the El-Ed teachers and all I did was copy & paste it!! You dont think i would actually sit & type all of that!!??

Sonya C said...

I didn't say them all right the first time. I never really thought about it to realize that there are so many words used so differently in English.

Thanks Kristen for sharing that.

Jamie said...

Hey Kristen,
How is your job going? Do you get a lot of calls for subs? Is it just a morning/night kind of thing?

I always hated calling for a sub when I was teaching, my principal would always say, "Are you sure you can't come in?" Maybe if he wanted me to throw up on him!

Hope you're enjoying it.

Donna Sensor Thomas said...

Steve,

Yes, English did evolve from German; they are sister languages.

English has many homonyms but what I think makes other languages difficult is multiple genders and cases. For example, German has three genders and you have to REMEMBER what the gender is in order to get things like the adjective endings correct.

Of course, German is easy compared to Finnish and Hungarian...

:-)

Vicky said...

Well, sorry to be a pedant, but...

Yes, English is derived from German (Anglo-Saxons) but after the Anglo-Saxons arrived in England, the Vikings showed up at the end of the 8th Century. They ruled England until 1066 when the Normans showed up. Everyone likes to think the Normans were French but no, actually, they were Vikings too (the word Norman comes from Norseman - which means Viking) so modern English is more directly descended from Scandinavian language than Germanic.

Sorry. I'm really anal when it comes to language. It's my job. :-/

Vicky said...

By the way, Donna, my favorite Hungarian word is krumpli!

kristen said...

Jamie..i do like it, at times it is crazy...like this week,there are between 15 and 22 subs in between the 3 bldgs...meetings & such...and then alot of the districts in the area are at the same meetings so subs are not available...the morning/night calls have not been bad at all...alot of it is done via e-mail for advance days

ok, vicki...what is "krumpli"

mathbach said...

forget about "krumpli" i had to look up "pedant".

pedant: one who unduly emphasizes minutiae in the presentation or use of knowledge.

kristen said...

ok, that helps...what the hell is minutiae

mathbach said...

details

Vicky said...

krumpli = potato

I said I was anal about language. Sheesh!