Since you mentioned it:
Let's face it - English is a crazy language. 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, isn't a race at all).
That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when
the lights are out, they are invisible.
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