Enjoy, all!  I am wondering if other languages also possess such oddities.  Anyone?

SO, YOU THOUGHT YOU WERE TOUGH ENOUGH TO TRY TO LEARN ENGLISH?

This little treatise on the lovely language we share is only for the brave. It was passed on by a linguist, original author unknown. Peruse at your leisure, English lovers.

Reasons why the English language is so hard to learn:
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?

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 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, is not a race at all. That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights
are out, they are invisible.  

PS. - Why doesn’t "Buick" rhyme with "quick"  

What a wonderful article!  Thank you for sharing.

Tim and I struggle with the thermostat.  I say "turn the air conditioner up" (when I am hot) and he says "turn the air conditioner down" (when he is hot).  Recently I have resorted to "would you please make it colder" or "I’m hot, would you please fix that for me."  I guess that isn’t really the same thing to which the article was referring, but it is what I thought of.

I also thought of "uptown" and "downtown".  Charlotte NC used to have a "downtown" but someone decided that this was bad for business and sounded trashy, so now we have an "uptown" instead.

My oldest son, Thomas, turned 7 in February, so he has been learing to read over the last few years.  I remember once about a year ago that I was getting really frustrated.  Thomas didn’t seem to mind at all (he is a great deal like his father) but I found trying to explain English spelling an endlessly frustrating endeavor.  Every few words we would stop and I would explain the various pronounciations of "ou" or "ow" or "ea" or "ie"... silent "e" verses final "e"s that are not silent.  How is anyone supposed to learn that stuff!!  It was ridiculous!  I resorted, at some point, to etymology and now I have the only 1st grader I know who will explain that "ph" sounds like "f" because it is in a word that has Greek roots!  

I had a very hard time learning to read (dyslexia and disinterest), and when I started teaching Thomas I wondered how I ever learned!  I am pround, and completely shocked, to say that Thomas is now the best reader in his class.  I have a suspicion that my 2nd son takes after me.  I hope not.  He is 4 1/2, and so far is only interest in the written word are the letters "O",
"W", and "K".  Maybe I should show him that he could spell "ok" and "ow!".... hmmmmm.  English spelling is a bear, and I cannot bare the thought of having to teach it once again to children I have born… or anyone else either.

~Shannon

[quote author=KatyBr link=board=omni;num=1048865290;start=0#2 date=03/28/03 at 11:24:32]
When my daughter was 13 months a neighbor informed me she was retarded because she couldn’t talk yet

Well, then, I have THREE retarded children!  I was an exceptionally early talker and was telling stories and such by the time I was 18 months old.  My mom worried when my kids all talked so late.  Both boys have had difficulty with certain sounds.  (Glynis, my 15 month old, hasn’t been late.  But she still only says about 8-10 words… which is late by my mom’s standards) However, I have taken it as a good sign since I struggled so much in school.  I’ve wondered if precociousness is somehow related to learning difficulties when in a traditional academic environment.  Tim’s mom doesn’t really know when he started talking… she had 5 kids in 6 1/2 years, so I think much of it is a blur to her. :-X

Your neighbor must not have had much interaction with 13 month olds!  Non-talking 13 month olds are a fairly common type!  Did you ever live next door to my mom??  ;D :D

Thank you for the encouragement!  I need all I can get!

~Shannon

Some children speak at an early age because they have something to say. Other children don’t have anything to say, or don’t need to actually speak to be understood so they don’t learn. I’m sure there are plenty of other formulations as well. I think it’s the same as toilet training, (although having older siblings to help is probably not to be discounted there).

*shrug*

Patricia/AgDrgn

[quote author=tamisaac link=board=omni;num=1048865290;start=0#0 date=03/28/03 at 10:28:10]I am wondering if other languages also possess such oddities.  Anyone?

I figure my question got lost and I’d ask again.  Does anyone know of of similar oddities in other languages?

Any language worth its salt have this kind of oddities. In Spanish you "commit suicide yourself"; a place to buy veggies is a verduleria, but you buy verduras, not verdulas; irregular verbs are a norm; you can write funny sentences including papa (same word for potato and the pope). Anyway, the irregularities of pronunciation are at the top of my "frustrating things in English" list. Things like the day is windy and the road is windy. The fact that the same combinations of letters can be pronounced in different ways is a killer.

ONe thing I’ll say about Spanish is that in general, it seems to follow the sound more than the spelling.  I wish I could explain that better but I am tired.

...

ok, the sound of the word is more important than spelling, so the spellings get changed to conform with the sounds rather than the other way around, as seems to be the case so often in English.

Hence all the convenient accent marks.  Hence a word like oyera (subjunctive of oír, to hear).  Following spelling, it should be oiera.  NOt a great example.  But you get my point I hope.

I love that about Spanish.  The irregular verbs can be quite troublesome in the beginning, but after a while you just hear them all and remember them.

inanna

If you complain about the existence of homonyms in the English laguage, try Japanese!  They are surely found in my native tongue in multitudes, and I hazard that words with the same pronounciation but different meaning are common in all 6.800 languages on the globe.
My troubbles with English is the awful spelling, for which other country has spelling contests (as you may have noticed by a number of misstakes I´ve made in this forum or agora).  But that has been discussed before.  Annother difficulty is the use of those nasty little words called prepositions that seem to buzz around in the text without any rules.

[quote author=Iterman link=board=omni;num=1048865290;start=0#9 date=04/01/03 at 04:53:36]a number of misstakes I´ve made

we didn’t notice any smelling pistakes at all.

Bryn

Fortunately, nowadays we can blame all errors on computers, claiming that they’re typos. Uh-huh! Yeah!

~Silver

[quote author=Tims_Wife link=board=omni;num=1048865290;start=0#1 date=03/28/03 at 11:08:07] . . . I also thought of "uptown" and "downtown".  Charlotte NC used to have a "downtown" but someone decided that this was bad for business and sounded trashy, so now we have an "uptown" instead.

According to the AHD, downtown IS the business district of a city!  Uptown is the "Upper" part of the city, whatever that is.  

. . . but I found trying to explain English spelling an endlessly frustrating endeavor.  Every few words we would stop and I would explain the various pronounciations of "ou" or "ow" or "ea" or "ie"... silent "e" verses final "e"s that are not silent.  How is anyone supposed to learn that stuff!!

By rote!   ;D  Actually, it’s all just a form of pattern recognition.  Before a child can "read" they can tell a McDonald’s from a Burger King or a Taco Bell.

 It was ridiculous!  I resorted, at some point, to etymology and now I have the only 1st grader I know who will explain that "ph" sounds like "f" because it is in a word that has Greek roots!  

;D  Fun with Fonics or Phun with Phonics?  

. . . I have a suspicion that my 2nd son takes after me.  I hope not.  He is 4 1/2, and so far is only interest in the written word are the letters "O",
"W", and "K".  Maybe I should show him that he could spell "ok" and "ow!".... hmmmmm.  English spelling is a bear, and I cannot bare the thought of having to teach it once again to children I have born… or anyone else either.

~Shannon

You can also teach him to stir-fry with a WOK!  ;D

Hand-in-hand with reading goes pronuciation.  I remember back in 1st or 2nd grade being knocked out of a spelling (well, actually, reading) bee line-up when the nun flipped up the word "our" and I pronounced it like I frequently do, rhyming with the verb "are" (rhymes with the letter "R").  Ah, well, I guess she just wasn’t a native Wa(r)shintonian.   :D

"R Father, who art in heaven, . . . "

By rote!

That’s how we used to learn stuff. All the multiplication tables, of course, but even spelling. Zooming back to 1954 or so, I recall our entire class of infants having to recite: s-e-p-A-r-a-t-e, b-e-c-A-u-s-e; a-double-c-i-d-E-n-t-a-double ell-y.

The list went on and on. There was a woman (teacher) with a stick who punished any transgressor with a SMACK wherever and whenever she thought it  appropriate.

I also recall learning History by rote.

"King Canute went down to the sea,
In came the tide and away went he.

Bad King John on Runnemede Green,
Magna Carta, 12-15."

And so on.

It was all very destructive. If we’d had any sense, or been over the age of 5, we’d have rebelled.

- PW

ANd we all still have to do music by rote.  Oh, the endless do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-si-do!  

I hate rote memorization.  I shouldn’t be a musician.  But I’m doing my part to minimize the mind-numbing/ear-deafening aspect of it all with as much understanding of harmony and theory as possible.  It has saved me a lot of time so far.

Remember the times tables?  It was the only thing I remember from 4th grade.  I have a friend who has created "Multiplication Table Rap" with kids form the county Juvenile Detention Center.  Apparently their math scores on tests have gone through the roof!

That’s nothing but memorization made fun!

inanna

[quote author=Stargzer link=board=omni;num=1048865290;start=0#12 date=04/01/03 at 21:41:33]Before a child can "read" they can tell a McDonald’s from a Burger King or a Taco Bell.

Reminds me of one of those Letterman lists:

What is McDonald’s worst fear? That people will figure out that the Filet o’ Fish Sandwich and the Apple Pie are the same thing . . .

[quote author=Tims_Wife link=board=omni;num=1048865290;start=0#1 date=03/28/03 at 11:08:07] ... I had a very hard time learning to read (dyslexia and disinterest) ...

Shannon, you amaze me ! You certainly don’t write like a dyslectic—do you have a wonderful programme for dyslectics on your computer, or do you get Tim (a lectic if I ever saw one) to help you, or—which I regard as most probable—is it the case that your <dyslexia> was more a case of disinclination than disability ?...

Henri

PS : Tamisaac, fantastic piece ! Where did you get it ?...

[quote author=M._Henri_Day link=board=omni;num=1048865290;start=15#16 date=04/02/03 at 13:14:01]
Shannon, you amaze me ! You certainly don’t write like a dyslectic—do you have a wonderful programme for dyslectics on your computer, or do you get Tim (a lectic if I ever saw one) to help you, or—which I regard as most probable—is it the case that your <dyslexia> was more a case of disinclination than disability ?...

Henri

 
Well, I’ve been told that I have developed some unusual coping skills.  But, most of the things that I post I copy into a Word document first and do a spelling check.  Also, for some reason, I type with fewer mistakes than I write.  I suspect that disinterest was at least as much of an obstacle as anything else.  

My dyslexia shows up in the oddest ways… forgetting which side of the road to drive on when I make turns on isolated roads, remembering which way to hold my flute, not knowing right from left… those sorts of things.  My best friend teases me when she co-pilots and I drive, "Shannon, take a left at the next right."  The odd thing is that I have an incredible sense of direction!

Also, Tim has been known to edit things for me after they have already been posted.  I love to write.  It seems as though having a computer and typing everyday has done wonders for my ability to get what I want to say said in written form.  I read faster than most people I know, now.  But I still encounter situations where I can’t seem to understand what I read.  Sometimes I diagram the sentence I am reading so I can translate it.  It seems most popular books are written on an elementary enough grade level that I can read them without much trouble.   It was learning to read at all that has really been the biggest obstacle.  Raising children who aren’t dyslexic has been an eye-opening experience for me.  Things that I really struggled with, and that I thought were very complicated things to learn, seem to be very easy for the children I have worked with.  

Actually, I have wondered if dyslexia can be developmental… I don’t seem to have nearly as many problems now as I used to.  It could just be the coping skills I have developed.

~Shannon

PS - I just did a spell check on this and it showed that everything was correct!  I don’t think that has ever happened to me!  whoo-hoo!