English Language
Quirks
THIS IS LONG
BUT VERY INTERESTING....
You Think English
is Easy???
Can you read
these right the first time?
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) Upon seeing
the tear in the painting, I shed a tear.
19) I had to
subject the subject to a series of tests.
20) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?
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, 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"
You lovers of the English language might
enjoy this.
There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter
word, and that is "UP."
It's easy to understand UP, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but
when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP? At a meeting, why does a topic come UP? Why do we speak UP and why are the
officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report ?
We call UP our friends. And we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver;
warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen. We lock UP the house and some guys fix UP the old car. At other times the
little word has real special meaning. People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses.
To be dressed is one thing but to be dressed UP is special.
And this UP is confusing: A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP. We
open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night.
We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP! To be knowledgeable about the proper uses
of UP, look the word UP in the dictionary. In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4th of the page and can add UP
to about thirty definitions. If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used it will take
UP a lot of your time, but if you don't give UP , you may wind UP with a hundred or more. When it threatens to rain, we say
it is clouding UP When the sun comes out we say it is clearing UP
When it rains, it wets the earth and often mess's things UP
When it doesn't rain for awhile, things dry UP .
We could go on, but I'll wrap it UP , for now my time is UP, so... Time to shut
UP!
Oh... one more thing:
What is the first thing you do in the morning
& the last thing you do at night?
U-P!
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ROOTS
"butter" and "margarine"
Holiday cooking is sure to include
butter and/or margarine. The latter
is, of course, a much more recent
invention than the former. Around
1813, French chemist Michel Eugene
Chevreuil was analyzing fatty acids.
He isolated one and named it "margaric
acid" due to the pearly luster
of its granules. (The Greek word
for "pearl" is "margarites". The name
"Margaret" is another derivative.)
The chemical term was, in time,
discarded, but Chevreuil's nomenclature
was preserved in the term for a
butter substitute invented, in 1869,
by another French scientist,
Hippolyte Mege-Mouries.
The Greek word "bouturon" became
the Latin "butyrum" which was adopted
into Old English as "butere". The
Greek word may have come from
combining "bous" ("cow") and "turos"
("cheese"). But since the earliest
forms of the Greek word don't reflect
this explanation, the Greeks may
have obtained the word from the
Scythians. The Scythians were noted
butter-lovers, but neither the Greeks
nor Romans, once acquainted with
it, were fond of butter. Olive oil
was used to moisten bread and in
cooking. Eating butter was seen
as something rather barbaric. (The
Greeks used the term "butyrophagoi"
-- "butter-eaters" - to describe
the Thracians.) Butter was, however,
used by the Greeks as an ointment--
Hippocrates used it to treat burns--and
sometimes as a divine offering.
Romans also used butter medicinally
and as a beauty product for skin
and hair.
Margarine became more popular with
U.S. consumers than butter during
the 1950s and remains so. But it
took some serious battling with butter
to get there. When margarine was
introduced in the 1870s to the United
States, its manufacturers and vendors
did not always make it clear
their less expensive product was
not butter. Spurred by such deceptive
practices, and the desire to protect
their up-until-then exclusive
market, the dairy industry fought
margarine with labeling laws and
taxation. The most effective anti-margarine
tool was forbidding the
addition of yellow artificial coloring
to the naturally white
margarine. Manufacturers eventually
began to supply food-coloring that
could be kneaded into margarine
before serving it.
Butter shortages during the first
World War increased margarine's use;
the Depression saw more pro-dairy
legislation and an increase in butter
consumption. World War II brought
margarine back onto American tables
and most restrictions gradually
erased.
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HOT LEX(ICOLOGY):
reek / wreak / wreck
*Reek*, as a noun, means "a strong
offensive odor; a stench; or vapor,
steam, or smoke." (The fire died
out and left the ruins reeking.)
As a verb, *reek* means "to emit
or be pervaded by something
unpleasant; to give off smoke, fumes,
warm vapor, steam, etc." It
sometimes is used synonymously with
smack, meaning to have an element
suggestive (of something). (This
reeks of foul play.) The meanings
related to vapor, steam, smoke,
etc. seem to be disappearing, although
that connotation was the original.
(The fire died out and left the
ruins reeking.)
*Wreak* is also pronounced reek.
You usually hear it in the phrase
"wreak havoc". (That phrase, by
the way, was first used by Agatha
Christie in 1923.) *Wreak* in this
sense of "bringing about, causing"
is often confused with *wreck*,
which means "to ruin by or as if by
violence" (verb) and (noun) "the
action of wrecking; the fact or state
of being wrecked; or the ruins left
by wreaking." Wreaking destruction
may leave a wreck. Storms, unruly
children, invading armies,
pollutants, and the like wreak havoc
they do not wreck it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
New Proposed
Language Change
European Commission
has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which
was the other possibility.
As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had
some room for improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in plan that would become known as "Euro-English".
In
the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy.
The
hard "c" will be dropped in favour of "k". This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter.
There
will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f". This will make words
like fotograf 20% shorter.
In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach
the stage where more komplikated changes are possible.
Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters
which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling.
Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent "e" in
the languag is disgrasful and it should go away.
By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing
"th" with "z" and "w" with "v".
During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou" and
after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensi bl riten styl.
Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil
find it ezi tu understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru.
Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al
be speking German like zey vunted in ze forst plas.
If zis mad you smil, pleas pas on to oza pepl.
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A little trivia information
Stewardesses"
is the longest word typed with only the left hand ..
And "lollipop" is the longest word typed with
your right hand. (Bet you tried this out mentally, didn't you?)
No word in the English language rhymes
with month, orange, silver, or purple.
"Dreamt" is the only English word that ends in the letters "mt".
Our
eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing.
The sentence: "The quick brown fox jumps over
the lazy dog" uses every letter of the alphabet.
The words 'racecar,' 'kayak'
and 'level' are the same whether they are read left to right or right to left (palindromes).
There are only four words in
the English language which end in "dous": tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.
There are two words
in the English language that have all five vowels in order: "abstemious" and "facetious."
TYPEWRITER is the longest
word that can be made using the letters only on one row of the keyboard.
A cat has 32 muscles in each ear.
A goldfish has a memory span
of three seconds.
A "jiffy" is an actual unit of time
for 1/100th of a second.
A shark is the only fish that can blink with both eyes.
A snail can sleep
for three years.
Almonds are a member of the
peach family.
An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.
Newborn babies are born without
kneecaps. They don't appear until the child reaches 2 to 6 years of age.
February 1865 is the only month
in recorded history not to have a full moon.
In the last 4,000 years,
no new animals have been domesticated.
If the population of China walked past you, 8 abreast, the line would
never end because of the rate of reproduction.
Leonardo Da Vinci invented the
scissors
Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite!
Rubber bands last longer
when refrigerated.
The average person's left hand does 56% of the typing.
The cruise liner, QE 2, moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns.
The microwave
was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.
The winter of 1932 was so cold that Niagara Falls froze completely froze solid.
There are more chickens than people
in the world.
Winston Churchill was born in a ladies' room during a dance.
Women blink nearly twice as much as men.
Now you know more than you did before!!
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