73 lines
3.6 KiB
Plaintext
73 lines
3.6 KiB
Plaintext
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From: DALE DAY
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Excerpts from "Crazy English" by Richard Lederer (Pocket Books 1989)
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Nonetheless, it is now time to face the fact that English is a
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crazy language.
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In the crazy English language, the blackbird hen is brown,
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blackboards can be blue or green, and blackberries are green and then
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red before they are ripe. Even if blackberries were really black and
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blueberries really blue, what are strawberries, cranberries, elderberries,
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huckleberries, raspberries, boysenberries, and gooseberries supposed to
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look like?
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To add to the insanity, there is no butter in buttermilk, no egg in
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eggplant, neither worms nor wood in wormwood, neither pine nor apple in
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pineapple, and no ham in a hamburger. (In fact, if somebody invented a
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sandwich consisting of a ham patty in a bun, we would have a hard time
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finding a name for it.) To make matters worse, English muffins weren't
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invented in England, french fries in France, or Danish pastries in Denmark.
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And we discover even more culinary madness in the revelations that sweet-
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meat is made from fruit, while sweetbread, which isn't sweet, is made from
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meat.
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In this unreliable English tongue, greyhounds aren't always grey (or
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gray), ladybugs and fireflies are beetles, a panda bear is a raccoon, a
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koala bear is a maruspial, a guinea pig is neither a pig nor from Guinea,
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and a titmouse is neither mammal nor mammaried.
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...
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Why is it that a woman can man a station but a man can't woman one,
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that a man can father a movement but a woman can't mother one, and that a
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king rules a kingdom but a queen doesn't rule a queendom? How did all those
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Renaissance men reproduce when there doesn't seem to have been any
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Reniassance women?
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A writer is someone who writes, and a stinger is something that stings.
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But fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce, hammers don't ham, and hum-
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dingers don't hum. If the plural of tooth is teeth, shouldn't the plural of
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booth be beeth? One goose, two geese - so one moose, two meese? One index,
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two indices - one Kleenex, two Klennices? If people ring a bell today and
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rang a bell yesterday, why don't we say that they flang a ball? If they wrote
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a letter perhaps they also bote their tongue. If the teacher taught, why
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isn't it also true that the preacher praught? Why is it that the sun shone
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yesterday while I shined my shoes, that I treaded water and then trod on
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soil, and that I flew out to see a World Series game in which my favorite
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player flied out?
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<And we wonder why others find English so hard to learn?>
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Again, courtesy of my wife's English teacher, Mr. Gomez
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---
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<20> Via ProDoor 3.4<EFBFBD>R The Home Place BBS - Las Vegas - node 1
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