The beauty of the English language

If you ever feel stupid, then just read on. If you’ve learned to speak fluent English, you must be a genius! This little treatise on the lovely language we share is only for the brave. 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?

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 bread or sweet, are meat.

Quicksand works 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? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it? Is it an odd, or an end?

If teachers taught, why didn’t preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? 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.

Re: The beauty of the English language

And of course "Bite Me" doesn't really mean bite me.

Re: The beauty of the English language

CM dear I am so telling DW on you. Or whoever it was that posted this on gb before. :p

my advice to people : Dont ever teach an ESL class until you have buckets of extra patience.

Oh yeah and nothing annoys me as much as when people mix up quite, quiet and quit.

Re: The beauty of the English language

22) The Subject of this thread has full command on his subject.

Re: The beauty of the English language

LOL!. Tell DW all you want. She won't do a damn thing. :p She would be happy instead :p

Re: The beauty of the English language

“more numb”, rather than number, seems/sounds correct to me.

Re: The beauty of the English language

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=numb

Re: The beauty of the English language

Good thread.

Re: The beauty of the English language

Christ is pronounced Kryst but Church is not Kurk. George, garbage :silly:

Re: The beauty of the English language

hmmm, i’d still use more numb. It’s all mind numbing really.

Re: The beauty of the English language

i find urdu much harder. not like the conversational english, but like the big words and poetic sense of it. like it takes me 10 minutes to decipher one line written by anwaar :smack:

Re: The beauty of the English language

its cuz you are not a grown up yet :stuck_out_tongue:

Re: The beauty of the English language

Oh so you’re saying once I’m old and wrinkly and I have hair growing out of my ears that I’ll finally be able to understand Anwaar’s sacred Urdu? I think not :snooty:. It takes time and practice, something I am ready to face.

I’m learning how to count to 100 in Urdu :). I’m up to 30 so far.

Re: The beauty of the English language

let me know when you can count 79 and 89 :slight_smile:

Re: The beauty of the English language

English is probably the hardest language to learn if you didn't grow up with it, whilst Arabic and Persian are probably the easiest.

Urdu is almost as bad as English because it is not concise, there is no standard dialect. The Indian Muslims on one extreme are passing off Persian as Urdu and on the other Hindi as Urdu whilst the Pakistani Muslims are injecting far too much Arabic into Urdu so that it starts sounding extremely awkward and ungraceful, Arabic is nice as a language of it's own but Urdu sounds annoying when Arabic vocabulory is pushed into it unnecesarily.

What we need to do in our country is develop our own standard Pakistani "Urdu" called Pakistani, which will be more distinct from Hindi or even Indian Urdu, there needs to be a project where language scholars from all over Pakistan get together and using the current Urdu (this language has a lot of potential and versatility) as the basis build upon and alter it maybe inserting vocabulory from Pashto & Balochi and Punjabi & Sindhi (the latter two are not really neccesary because they already have a lot in common with Urdu) into it, the regional languages should also gain national recognition but this new descendant of Urdu called Pakistani should be the only official and consitutional language meant for every Pakistani togther with his regional language (be that Pashto, Punjabi or Urdu), we can start by introducing the new standard Pakistani language into the national curriculum and into the media, maybe even suspending other languages from schools and the media for a few years so that the new national language Pakistani can take root.

Re: The beauty of the English language

^ I agree. I've caught on to Arabic pretty quick. Maybe because I already know how to read it and stuff, but I find the way the sentences are structured very easy. All goes with the same basic setup

Re: The beauty of the English language

^
Yep that's it. :)

Once you know how to read the language and you know the basic structure and grammar rules all you need is a dictionary and using any word from that you can start forming sentences.

Re: The beauty of the English language

^ Right. Same reason why Urdu is so hard for me. The structure is always different for questions, statements, etc.

Re: The beauty of the English language

repost
http://www.paklinks.com/gs/showthread.php?t=184914