by Curt Kovener
The English language is difficult because it sets rules and then breaks them.
I still remember many of the English lessons and rules my high school teacher, Corean Lewis taught us even though it has been a half-century plus since I was sitting in her class.
She taught us rhymes to help us remember some of them. Like “i before e except after c” however life and a career of writing taught me the exceptions: “it is either or neither that ancient foreign neighbors seize their eight counterfeit beige sleighs pulled by feisty weird weightlifters.” I have learned that there are only 44 words that follow that rule and over 900 that break it.
And there are other exceptions to the rules and logic that Richard Lederer is credited with penning.
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We’ll begin with a box and the plural is boxes; but the plural os ox became oxen not oxes.
One fowl is a goose but two are called geese, but the plural of moose should never be meese.
You may find a lone mouse or a nest full of micel yet the plural of house is houses not hice.
If the plural of man is always 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 who set are teeth, why shouldn’t the plural of booth be called beeth? Then one may be that, and three sould 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 thosugh 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 not pine in pineapple.
English muffins were invented in England.
And speak of 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 writers write but fingers don’t fing, grocers don’t groce and hammers don’t ham?
Doesn’t it seem odd 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 your call it?
If teachers taught, why didn’t preacher praught?
If a gegetarian eats vegetables, what does a hamanitarian eat?
Sometimes I think all the folks who gre up speaking English should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane.
In what other language do actors recite at a play and musicians play at a recital?
We 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 and it burns downl in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which an alarm goes off by going on.
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Truthful, accurate, and unexplainable. But Mrs. Lewis is still my favorite teacher.