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 or French fries in France.
Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet,
aren't 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
indices? 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 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 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.
English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects
the creativity of the human race (which, of course, isn't a
race at all). That is why, when the stars are out, they are
visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.
