Crazy English Language.

M

Maywalk

Maywalk
Location
Leicestershire UK
The English Plural according to.... We'll begin with a box, and the plural is boxes,
But the plural of ox becomes 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 speak 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 there 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!

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 . 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? 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 folks who grew up speakingEnglish Should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane.
In what other language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? We ship by truck but send cargo by ship...
We have noses that run and feet that smell.
We park in a driveway and drive in a parkway.
And 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. And in closing............
If Father is Pop, how come Mother's not Mop.
 

The writings of Shakespeare actually influenced the English language, as his works contributed to standardise English language rules and grammar in the 17th and 18th centuries. The words and phrases that he wrote were embedded in the language especially in: “A Dictionary of the English Language,” by Samuel Johnson. The introduction of new words as well as phrases had greatly enriched the English language, which made it more expressive and colourful. Some believe that Shakespeare was the first to use about 1,700 words. Words that be created by borrowing from other languages, changing verbs into adjectives or nouns and vice versa, adding suffixes and prefixes and connecting other words as well as creating new ones. He had several phrases that are still very much a part of today’s language and conversation such as full circle, a sorry sight, strange bedfellow and seen better days.

A few centuries before Shakespeare, Geoffrey Chaucer helped found the English vernacular tradition. Some scholars point out that an English literary tradition had begun to emerge centuries earlier, so it’s not exactly accurate to say that Chaucer started the trend. Still, he was certainly going against the grain when he chose to write The Canterbury Tales, his magnum opus, in English. During the fourteenth century, French and Latin were viewed as more sophisticated and more permanent than English. Chaucer proved that literature written in English could be every bit as beautiful, enjoyable, complex, and profound as literature written in a supposedly “better” language.

In August 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt issued an order from his summer residence in Oyster Bay, New York, that would soon be the talk of Washington and the world beyond. Launched the previous March and financed by the steel baron Andrew Carnegie, the board wanted to strip the American language of its antiquated British baggage and create a clean and modern version for the 20th century.

Carnegie, who had emigrated to the United States as a teenager with little formal education, had high hopes for the project. “Mr. Carnegie has long been convinced that English might be made the world language of the future, and thus one of the influences leading to universal peace,” the New York Times reported. “He believes that the chief obstacle to its speedy adoption is to be found in its contradictory and difficult spelling.”

But the reaction to this spelling move was swift and mostly negative, even though many of the words on the list were already in wide use, such as “honor” instead of “honour” and “check” in place of “cheque.” The New York Times, in fact, calculated that at least 131 of the 300 simplified spellings appeared regularly in its own pages. The benefit of stopping the spelling changes was to have a spoken and similarly written, (almost) language throughout the English speaking world. It's possible that American/English could have, unintentionally, fragmented the language in the way that French, Spanish, Italian and others, fragmented Latin.
 
I'm very pleased that most of those countries which have adopted English as the universal language have stuck to British English rather than the American version. After all, most were originally part of the British Empire.
There are a few people on this site who think we should all use the American spelling but it's a good way to demonstrate that we are not all living in the same country. Most of us prefer our own heritage.
 

Lavinia said:
There are a few people on this site who think we should all use the American spelling but it's a good way to demonstrate that we are not all living in the same country. Most of us prefer our own heritage.
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I can't think of anyone here ever mentioning something like that but I don't read every thread. For goodness sake we all know some words have slightly different spellings. So what?
 
I'm in favor of the ITA alphabet. The Initial Teaching Alphabet is 44 characters, with each making only one sound. It isn't hard to memorize the additional characters and it makes reading English so much easier! In the USA, as elsewhere, we have regional accents/dialects and so many sayings and expressions that all add to the difficulties. And words (whether spoken or written) with more than one meaning should be outlawed! (-;
 
I almost wrote to a member in England... "My biggest beef is..." And then I realized, what does that even mean? Here it means something like "gripe," but why "beef?"
 
"Let's Hook Up" – True story: I was a 60-something college student in a class of 18-20 year olds. We had partnered up for a geology trip later in the day. As class disbanded, I called out to my young male partner from across the room, "I'll hook up with you later." The whole class burst out laughing. I was confused. Apparently what used to just mean "meet you" now meant "have sex with you!"
 
When I worked in Amsterdam, many of my Dutch colleagues travelled to work by bicycle. One of the female colleagues explained that companies often gave grants for purchasing bicycles adding that she thought that everyone should "ride the company bike". At this, all us Brits burst out laughing and had to explain that the "company bike" was slang for , shall we say, a girl with loose morals.
 
Em in Ohio said:
"Let's Hook Up" – True story: I was a 60-something college student in a class of 18-20 year olds. We had partnered up for a geology trip later in the day. As class disbanded, I called out to my young male partner from across the room, "I'll hook up with you later." The whole class burst out laughing. I was confused. Apparently what used to just mean "meet you" now meant "have sex with you!"
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Hence '' hooker''
 
Capt Lightning said:
Although it pre-dates the American civil war, the term Hooker is often associated with brigadier general Joseph Hooker. There is a statue of him in Boston, and I was told that he would arrange for local "ladies" to entertain the troops. Hence popularising "Hooker" to mean prostitute.
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But now we're not supposed to use that word, either, because it allegedly "stigmatizes" them by calling them prostitutes.. we're supposed to say 'sex workers'... :cautious:
 

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