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Wednesday, March 14, 2012

English Language Peculiarities


And why can you tune a piano but not tune a fish?

Complexities of 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) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.
8) A bass was painted on the head of the 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 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) 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?
***
"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.
If Dad is Pop, how come Mom isn't Mop?..."

Top 10 English language oddities (From Pravda Online)


1. “Bookkeeper” is the only word that has three consecutive doubled letters.

2. The two longest words with only one of the six vowels including y are the 15-letter defenselessness and respectlessness.



3. “Forty” is the only number which has its letters in alphabetical order. “One” is the only number with its letters in reverse alphabetical order.

4. The superlatively long word honorificabilitudinitatibus (27 letters) alternates consonants and vowels.

5. Antidisestablishmentarianism listed in the Oxford English Dictionary, was considered the longest English word for quite a long time, but today the medical term pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis is usually considered to have the title, despite the fact that it was coined to provide an answer to the question ‘What is the longest English word?’.

6. “The sixth sick sheik's sixth sheep’s sick” is said to be the toughest tongue twister in English. (A.A. My kids argue that the the most tongue twisty of all is "Blue bug's blood." My own offering in these sweepstakes is "Shy soldier's shoulders.")

7. There is only one common word in English that has five vowels in a row: queueing.

8. The two longest words with only one of the six vowels including y are the 15-letter defenselessness and respectlessness.

9. “Asthma” and “isthmi” are the only six-letter words that begin and end with a vowel and have no other vowels between.

10 “Rhythms” is the longest English word without the normal vowels, a, e, i, o, or u.
 
***

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.

To cleave means both “to stick to” and “to sever/separate.”

There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat.English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France. (A.A. Nor Belgian waffles in Belgium as I discovered on a visit to Bruges in the early 1990s.) 

Quicksand works slowly. Boxing rings are square. And a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor a pig.

And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham?

If my teachers taught, why didn't my preachers praught? 

And still... 

One index, two indices. (Though not for long...)

You can make amends but never just one... 

If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one, what do you call it?

If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?

Flammable and inflammable are synonyms.

Why do we say "I could care less" when we mean "I couldn't care less."

Since "am" is the "first person singular form" why do we use the second (or-third) person to say "Aren't I?"

Amn't I making myself clear? (What could be clearer?) 

When the stars are out, they're visible.

But when the lights are out, they're invisible.

***

(A.A. My favorite riddle)

What is greater than God and more evil than the devil? 
Hints: The poor have it, The rich don't need it, And if you eat it, you'll die.
(The answer follows this observation about Buick.)
P.S. — Why doesn't "Buick" rhyme with "quick"?

The answer to the riddle is "nothing."
Nothing is greater than God.
Nothing is more evil than the Devil.
The poor have nothing.
The rich need nothing.
And if you eat nothing, you'll die.

(A.A. In his book of essays, "Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Guide," Walker Percy argues that the most astonishing thing about language is that we take it for granted. If we realized what language IS and what language DOES, we would live such ontological and epistemological wonder that "The Presence" of "The Ground of Being" would always - all ways - seem "just around the corner.")

Other English language oddities:

***

Hey! What's up?
It's easy to understand UP, meaning toward the sky or at 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 the secretary to write UP a report? 
We call UP our friends. And we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver; we 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.
When it rains, it wets the earth and often messes things UP.
When it doesn't rain for awhile, things dry UP.
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. And of course, we chop the tree down before we can chop the tree up.
One could go on and on, but I'll wrap it UP, for now my time is UP, so........it is time to shut UP!



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