I just got this in an email from my folks. And I couldn't resist sharing it with all of you.

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.


Anonymous


Some reasons to be grateful if you grew up speaking English;
1) The bandage was wound around the wound.
2) The farm was used to produce produce.
3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
4) We must polish the Polish furniture.
5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.
6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
7) There is no time like the present, he said it was time to present the present.
8) At the Army base, a bass was painted on the head of a bass drum.
9) 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 with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
18) After a number of Novocain injections, my jaw got number.
19) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.
20) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
21) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?
22) I spent last evening evening out a pile of dirt.


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?
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 be the same, while a wise man and a wiseguy 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.
If Dad is Pop, how come! Mom isn't Mop?
GO FIGURE! That's American English.


unlike Sanskrit english made its own rules of pronounciation & Grammar in a different way based on the words derivated from:
example CH is pronounced as ka wen the word is derived from greek: example
character = karakter
CH is pronounced as sha wen the word is from french
example champagne,chateau
similarly with singulars & plurals


ML

Oh ML that was delightful! Thanks for sharing. I had to read that poem out loud as if I were reading a Dr. Seuss book. I read it to my husband and laughed all the way through as I read it.

-- DJ

Thanks a lot for sharing that, ML!

Barb

Yes, English is a wonderful language. What other language can you say "They're putting their stuff over there.", and make perfect sense.
This
reminds me of when my oldest daughter was just learning to talk. She started calling her grandfather (my father) Pop Pop. My mom said that she just wanted Skye to call her anything but changed her mind for some reason when she became Mop Mop for a few days.

Frank

LOL. This reminds me of Eddie Izzard's routine when he discusses how the English came up with the spelling for "through."

Oh, wow. Well, it reminds me of the word "ghoti". Never heard of it? It's an alternative spelling of "fish". Consider. "f" can be spelled "gh", as in "trough". The short "i" can be spelled "o", as in "women". "sh" can be spelled "ti" as in - oh, I don't remember which word it was right now. Not "motion", because there the "sh" sound is spelled "tio", but there is an English word where "sh" is spelled "ti", believe me.

Such fun, ML!
Ann

I think it's nation that they often use for the ti.

Consider pronouncing the following words

trough
through
dough
bough
tough
rough
cough

some are pronounced the same way, but there are 4 different pronunciations for the same four letters.

here's a great sentence for you:

Indeed, he protected her in word and in deed.

Actually, there are six pronunciations for the -ough phonogram . I think you captured five of them in your list.

/o/ - dough
/oo/ - through
/uff/ - rough
/off/ - cough
/aw/ - bought
/ow/ - bough

I never thought about it myself until I made my kids memorize them for spelling. (Kind of makes you feel sorry for my kids, doesn't it?)

I don't believe the "ghoti" thing actually works though, except as a joke, because you will never see 'gh' making an /f/ sound at the beginning of a word in English. You might see it - like in 'ghastly' - but the 'h' will be silent and the sound will be /g/.

Plenty of them, generally Latin in origin. (Again, I consult my phonogram cards...) In addition to the many -tion words, there's patient, confidential, dietitian, penitentiary, differentiate, and cautious - and any other words using those same endings. Anytime 'ti' is used at the beginning of any syllable after the first one, it will make a /sh/ sound. You won't see it at the end of words though - like in ghoti - because with a very few exceptions, English words don't end in 'i'.

Oh, and 'ci', 'si', and 'ch' can all make the /sh/ sound as well, just to keep life interesting.

Caroline, who is taking off her geeky homeschooler hat now

Meredith Knight had a quote a few years back as her exit message on IRC -- to the best of my memory, it went:

English doesn't borrow words from other languages. It follows other languages into dark alleys, beats them up, and goes through their pockets for loose grammar.



PJ

Learning to spell was for me, as a dyslexic, a nightmare. I still don't do it well. But the way I'd do it was to spell phonetically. But then, realizing that many words aren't spelled phonetically, I'd add random silent letters.

Thus, a word like 'nothing' could find itself spelled 'knothing' - when I added that silent 'k' .

It used to drive my teachers absolutely up the wall .

ML

ML said
I get a good chuckle out of some of your spellings too, even though not as much as I used to.

Caroline,
I think the ghoti thing was made up to show the seeming randomness of English spelling. I used to use it in my lectures about the difficulties learning disabled kids had with learning spelling rules. it was't meant to fit into all the rules.

gerry

Yeah, well some people pronounce bough like dough. I'd forgot it was pronounced like cow.

You nailed it, ML. Of course, it's difficult to be to hard on a language where 'fat chance' and 'slim chance' mean essentially the same thing.

Funny the issue of dyslexia should be mentioned in conjunction with learning to spell. I'm almost postive I have a dyslexic student currently and am at my wits end as to how to handle it. She can always repeat words once I say them so it's not a lack of language aptitude, but asking her to read off a page with words of more than 2 letters turns into a nightmare.

What I find hardest about any language is when brand names turn into the common name. So some Americans eat "Kraft dinner" which apparently is macaroni noodles and cheese along with a "Coke"--which usually isn't even made by the CocaCola Co. It's so confusing!

Isn't there somewhere you can send her for an assessment? When I taught at a university, I would refer students like her to Disability Services, where they would be sent for a learning disabilities assessment and then offered help and support - for example, some students would get special software or reading aids, and departments would be informed of the disability and asked to make allowances or provide certain types of handouts (eg large-print or in particular colours).

If you're not sure what's provided where you teach, ask a colleague (or the department administrator, who is generally the one who knows everything )


Wendy

I went through that whole thing, and didn't see one of my favorite English language mix-up things:

We drive on a parkway, but park on a driveway.

And I agree, the whole thing was totally funny! I found myself having to go back a few times in the numbered part, to re-pronounce certain words in my head, now that I knew which context I was supposed to be using.

I've seen this other places, I'm sure. Like on a T-shirt. English betrays its roots in every turn. It started out as a pidgin - a trade language that was an amalgam of the languages being spoken in an area. It steals wholeheartedly the words, the concepts, the grammar it needs to express concepts from the cultures it's dealing with, and makes the concepts its own as well.

Inuit may have many words for the varying aspects of snow, but I guarantee if an English speaker needs them, we'll cheerfully put them in our user dictionary.

AND, to make matters even more bizarre, a competent English speaker can usually read through the English work of non-native speakers and not only get the gist of the the message, but may even have trouble figuring out how to make it 'proper' English! (I have a Greek speaker I'm BRing for on a different forum. I know what she's trying to express, but for the life of me, I can't always figure out how to make it a 'normal' English phrase. And I dare you to find another language that would allow the term 'BRing' to fly!)

Thanks for sharing! I'm going to show my hubbie. I was laughing so hard my nose hurts now

I totally agree, however it is actually true that the Inuit language (50,000 dialects) that exist do not have an abnormally large amount of words for snow. Some people say there is no one language but a series of groups overlapping.

I think there was an argument somewhere that one of the first papers stated that the Inuit had four words for snow that each meaning "falling snow", "snow on the ground", "snow drift" and "drifting snow" or blowing snow"...I can't remember which of the last two it is. Another researcher expanded the list but some say it is because they did not understand the structure of the language.

I think there are about four or five words.

English is just crazy, however I can't seem to grasp any other language. I guess I just don't have constant exposure to it/them.

That is just so sweet!



Isn't that just crazy?

My parents live (well my mum is back for a bit) in Northern Manitoba on a reserve and they say the people there are really isolated from the outside world. No surprise, but what did surprise me was there are people who don't know Cree and rely on English, but they only know a handful of words. They of course of deeper problems. Most can't understand how to string together a sentence or understand the meaning of a word. I can't imagine not having the ability to speak at the level of a five year old in the only language I know. Some can do partial Cree and English, but to an outsider make no sense at all. Two or three of the older people try to learn, but they get very frustrated with the 'silly white man words'.

I totally agree! Craziness I tell you, CRAZINESS!

If the plural of "mouse" is "mice", why isn't the plural of "blouse" "blice"?

Nan

I'm pretty sure we had that in our English book (one of the Green Line series).

And there are several sets of letters which sound the same:
two - too
brake - break

And other letters which aren't pronounced for some stupid reason, as in: lis(t)en, (k)now,...

And then there are the letters not written but pronounced:
(y)uniform, n(y)ew (okay, it shoud be a yod...)

And the vowels - none of them are pronounced the way they are written, and the same combination can be pronounced in so many different ways... This is certainly different in French, Italian, Spanish and German - at least as far as I can tell.

I don't agree here. English certainly doesn't steal much in the way of grammar - it doesn't have much of it in the first place. At least not if you compare it to German or Latin.

Oh, and then there are those (whole!) words which can be pronounced in several different ways - like the word 'foyer'. I know of three different pronounciations - and I'm not even native!

Oh, and last but not least:

There was this little girl with a lock on her forehead.
If she was good, she was really, really good, but if she was bad, she was horrid.

I mean, 'forehead' can be pronounced as in fore-head, but also as a rhyme to 'horrid'. How strange is that?

English's grammar is inherently simpler from its roots. Pidgin languages normally have a stripped down grammar - as compared to Latin, French and German. English does not have noun genders, the verb tenses are actually simplified from the get go, and then to complexify them to create the additional tenses the verbs are made into compounds (I have, I had, I did have).

I maintain, as someone who way back when, actually took Latin, German, Spanish, and a smattering of Russian, the difficulty of English is not its inherent difficuty, but its inherent flexibility. I mean, how many ways can you say 'blue' in Latin or Russian? I mean, English is like Perl - if you can't come up with at least five different ways of saying something (and all gramatically correct), you're not trying.

I agree Dandello.

"New" isn't pronounced with a Y. It's always been like "noo" for me and everyone I've ever heard say the word. "Nyew" has usually just been said when someone was emphasizing the word, I think.

I've only ever heard it pronounced 'noo' by someone from New York or Boston Everyone else I've ever met pronounces it 'nyew'. That's certainly the way I was taught to say it, and how it's pronounced in the UK and Ireland, and in the parts of Canada I've been so far.

I've just checked Merriam-Webster, which offers both pronunciations as valid.


Wendy

Sorry, I was talking about the general British pronunciation. I have been told, though, that there is a tendency among younger folcs in GB to pronounce it "noo", too.

This whole 'new' thing is confusing me. I've been saying the word over and over again and I have no idea how I'm pronoucing it.

I've never heard new pronounced nyew except for emphasis. I always pronounce it noo.

Tara

Until I read this thread I wasn't aware there was another way to pronounce new but nyew.

Learn something n(y)ew...

LabRat

reminds me of a class I had at uni last year

one of my classmates was an exchange student from Ohio (I think) and when he read a passage about "peaks and troughs" (TROUFS) in a graph... he pronounced it
"TROWEL" as in a small shovel
the whole group of 6 others (all Aussies) burst out laughing, and from then on we only said TROWEL in the group... as a joke...

now I find it difficult to say TROUGH (FF) without getting confused)

a reply to your mouse/mice post... I sent it on to a few friends and this came back...


Wilhelm Gruff

So, Tara, where are you from?

I'm in California. I've lived here all of my life.

Tara

I think they might make the n stronger but nyew sounds like something from the Spanish n with ~ on top.

well here down under....
it has always been nyew
except ofcourse to some of my baby cousins... who say noo,

just like:
nyewz vs nooze (for newspaper...)

it is the EW that makes the OO sound...
like in EWE (the female sheep...!) pronounced thr same as YOU

{I wish I had a really cute icon of a sheep to add to this post}

Which proves my phonetics and phonology teacher right again. 'Nyew' for British folks (minus the younger ones), 'noo' for American folks. Unfortunately, he never mentioned Australians.

Not where I'm from (Alabama). Ewe is pronounced like ew (as in "ew - gross"), but less drawn-out and does not sound like you. Nor does ewe or new rhyme with moo, which does sound like you.

wow...
I alwayes thought a EWE was pronounced same as YOU...


Here Downunder, where there are more sheep than people in our countries population (don't ask me how many...) we keep our animals nice and clean... no gross ones anywhere in sight...

We have a population similar to that of NY (20-21million, well 15 years ago when we were 17million it was correct??? now???)
and a land area of about twice the size of Europe...
And yet most of that is desert....

but the numbers game has nothing to do with the probability of yelling out "Hey YOU" and getting it mistaken with "Hey EWE"
lol

{STill want a nice emoticon of a sheep to put here}

If EW (Gross) doen't rhyme with MOO... what does it rhyme with?
"Oh!"?.... Ahh"?.....?????
to me Ew (Gross) sounds like OOOH!! (or something)


A friend of mine is studying a master's in education... a part of which she is studying the SPALDING method for teaching literacy.... very similar to phonics, except more structured, and not at all the whole language method (no comment on either efficacies)...
NE way the thing is based on American phonetics... except You guys have such differing pronounciations throughout your country, that I have no Idea where Dr Spalding arived at his final choice....
In the instruction manual, the teacher is told to choose out of a list of pronounciations for the vowel sounds depending on local variations... it is very confusing

Well, as a matter of fact, there is a (standard) pronunciation called 'General American' or 'GenAm'. That's what you can learn here - apart from the standard British one ('Received Pronunciation" or 'RP').

Me too, and I'm American.

I don't think it rhymes with anything, but I've always pronounced it like a less-exaggerated "ee-you."

I was born and raised in the U.S. South, and I've always said 'nyew' which rhymes with the way I would say 'ewe'. It's very true that whereever you go in the USA, you will hear varied pronunciations, and determining what is standard American is very difficult. I have lived in Tennerssee in what I called 'Nashvul' much to the amusement of my nothern friends who said 'Nash Ville.' I have lived not too far from 'Nyorlins' which many people pronounce 'Noo Orleens'. I lived near Chicago for a while where restaurants offered not 'pi cahn' but 'pee can' pie. I lived in California where most people say 'Loss Anjelus', but some say 'Loss Anjuleez' and old timers say 'Loss Angulus'. Now I live in the Northwest which is said to be the place with the closest to the Standard American accent. Maybe, but I think it's because you hear all of the above here.

Jude

Well, I guess it's true for every language that there are many different varieties. At least it is equally true for German, my native language. There are so many varieties spoken... I'm barely able to understand (German-speaking) people from Switzerland!

They don't understand you either, Mellie. A friend of mine was in Australia and met someone from Switzerland, the German part. The guy wanted to talk to her in English rather than in German. Not because he needed to practice, but because he said that he couldn't understand her.

I don't doubt it.