I’ve mastered the English language fairly okay so far. When in the US people really don’t notice I’m from Europe, they notice I don’t speak like the locals do, but can’t place the accent (usually they guess I’m from the north-east – thankfully my host-parents never let me pick-up the Southern accent from KY and TN). For some reason I’ve always had a knack for English, but I don’t have this knack for any other language. My German and French are terrible (although I love to imitate German tourists), my Portuguese limits itself to anything to do with a restaurant (I worked in a restaurant there – go figure), and even my native Dutch isn’t all that good…but for some reason learning English came as a second nature for me.
As a native speaker you will probably never fully appreciate why learning English is actually quite hard, but it is. I’ve never seen a language with so many oddities which you all have to learn. I remember having to learn simple present, simple past, simple future, present continuous, past continuous, future continuous, present perfect, past perfect, future perfect, present perfect continuous, past perfect continuous, and future perfect continuous. And to top it all off…there are no rules to all this, so it basically comes down to learning lists and lists of tenses of words off the top of your head.
And then when you finally have the theory down. Guess what? When you actually start the speak it there are more oddities!
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 (Surprise!). Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren’t sweet, are meat.
Quicksand works slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinean 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? 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? 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.
Thanks to Alex King
