Our Exasperating Language

 

A friend sent me these examples of why English is such a hard language to learn — even if you’re a native speaker. I wasn’t able to track down the original source. My friend, who travels around the world teaching English, found this in a 2005 posting on a blog at wordpress.com.

 

Consider this lunacy:

 

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 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 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?

 

Further, how can we explain:

 

1. There is no egg in eggplant or ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple.

2. English muffins weren’t invented in England or French fries in France.

3. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren’t sweet, are meat.

4. Quicksand works slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is not from Guinea nor is it a pig.

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

6. If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn’t the plural of booth beeth?

7. One goose, two geese. So one moose, two meese?

8. Doesn’t it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend.

9. If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it? Is it an odd, or an end?

10. If teachers taught, why didn’t preachers praught?

11. Why do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Park on the driveway, drive on the parkway? Have noses that run and feet that smell?

12. How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites?

13. You have to marvel at 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.  And when the stars are out, they are bright, but when the lights are out, they are dark.

14.  Why doesn’t “Buick” rhyme with “quick”? On the other hand, why is there no word to rhyme with orange?