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pipop
15 Maret 2007 jam 1:50pm
 
Why English Is So Difficult We'll begin with a box, and the plural is boxes; You may find a lone mouse or a nest full of mice; If I spoke of my foot and show you my feet, If one is a tooth and a whole set are teeth, Then one may be that, and three would be those, We speak of a brother and also of brethren, Some reasons to be grateful if you grew up speaking English; 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. example CH is pronounced as ka wen the word is derived from greek example similarly with singulars & plurals. |