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’?