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’?