Now for your enjoyment and confusion, a poem:

I take it you already know!

Of tough and bough and cough and dough,

Others may stumble, but not you.

On hiccough, thorough, laugh, and through,

Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,

To learn of less familiar traps.

 

Beware of heard, a dreadful word,

That looks like beard and sounds like bird.

And dead--it's said like red, not bead.

For goodness sake, don't call it deed.

Watch out for meat and great and threat.

They rhyme with suite and straight and debt.

 

A moth is not a moth in mother,

Nor both in bother, broth in brother,

And here is not a match for there,

Nor dear and fear for pear and bear.

And then there's dose and rose and lose--

Just look them up--and goose and choose.

And cork and work and card and ward.

And font and front and word and sword.

And do and go, then thwart and cart.

Come, come, I've hardly made a start.

 

A dreadful language? Man alive,

I'd mastered it when I was five.

Anonymous.

But the poem was only the beginning:

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, are meat.

We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that a 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, two geese. So one moose, two meese? Or one mouse, two mice. So one house, two hice?

Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend, that you comb through annals of history but not a single annal? 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? If you wrote a letter, perhaps you bote your tongue?

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 wise guy are opposites? How can overlook and oversee be opposites, while quite a lot and quite a few are alike? How can the weather be hot as hell one day and cold as hell the next?

Have you noticed that we talk about certain things only when they are absent? Have you ever seen a horseful carriage or a strapful gown? Met a sung hero or experienced requited love? Have you ever run into someone who was combobulated, gruntled, ruly or peccable? And where are all those people who are spring chickens or who would actually hurt a fly? And just what is a what not?

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 clock 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. And why, when I wind up my watch, I start it, but when I wind up this essay, I end it.

(Note: Author unknown. Found on the Internet)

And finally:

• We polish Polish furniture.
• He could lead if he got the lead out.
• A farm can produce produce.
• The dump was so full, it had to refuse refuse.
• The soldier decided to desert in the desert.
• The present is a good time to present the present.
• At the Army base, a bass was painted on a bass drum.
• A dove dove into the bushes.
• I didn't object to the object.
• The insurance for the invalid was invalid.
• The bandage was wound around the wound.
• There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
• The two were too close to the door to close it.
• The buck does funny things when does are present.
• They sent a sewer down to stitch a tear in the sewer line.
• To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
• The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
• After a number of novocain injections, my lips got number.
• I shed a tear when I saw a tear in my shirt.
• I had to subject the subject to a number of tests.
• How can I intimate this to my most intimate friends?
• I spent last evening evening out a pile of dirt.

AND

More confusing English statements!!!
1. A bicycle can't stand on its own because it is two-tired.
2. What's the definition of a will? (It's a dead giveaway).
3. A backwards poet writes inverse.
4. In democracy it's your vote that counts. In feudalism it's your count that votes.
5. She had a boyfriend with a wooden leg, but broke it off.
6. A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion.
7. If you don't pay your exorcist you get repossessed.
8. With her marriage she got a new name and a dress.
9. Show me a piano falling down a mine shaft and I'll show you A-flat minor.
10. When a clock is hungry it goes back four seconds.
11. The man who fell into an upholstery machine is fully recovered.
12. A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum Blownapart.
13. You feel stuck with your debt if you can't budge it.
14. Local Area Network in Australia: the LAN down under.
15. He often broke into song because he couldn't find the key.
16. Every calendar's days are numbered.
17. A lot of money is tainted. It taint yours and it taint mine.
18. A boiled egg in the morning is hard to beat.
19. He had a photographic memory that was never developed.
20. A plateau is a high form of flattery.
21. The short fortuneteller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large.
22. Those who get too big for their britches will be exposed in the end.
23. Once you've seen one shopping center you've seen a mall.
24. Those who jump off a Paris bridge are in Seine.
25. When an actress saw her first strands of gray hair she thought she'd dye.
26. Bakers trade bread recipes on a knead to know basis.
27. Santa's helpers are subordinate clauses.
28. Acupuncture is a jab well done.
29. Marathon runners with bad footwear suffer the agony of defeat.

AND

If GH can stand for F as in Laugh

If O can stand for short I as in Women

If TI can stand for SH as in Nation

Then fish should really be spelled GHOTI

 

If GH can stand for P as in Hiccough

If OUGH stands for O as in Dough

If PHTH stands for T as in Phthisis

If EIGH stands for A as in Neighbor

If TTE stands for T as in Gazette

If EAU stands for O as in Plateau

Then the right way to spell POTATO should be: GHOUGHPHTHEIGHTTEEAU

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