THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE!!

[O2BESOHUGE]

TweetSubject: The English Language

You think English is easy??

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?

and there are more!
Do you shoot your arrow with a bow from the bow of your boat?

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' ???

[BIGMOFO]

Tweethave a beer, your tryin to use that hat rack to much brotha

[wutlisstrice]

Tweet

have a beer, your tryin to use that hat rack to much brotha

ROFLMAO

[bandaidwoman]

TweetAt least the english language only has eight verb conjugations. My brother speaks arabic, which as 80, Spanish, which I have been learning via skype has about 40 and the damn feminines and masculines!

[bandaidwoman]

Tweetchinese is my first language so it's not fair but we have tones. The exact same pronunciation has many many meanings depending on the tone and its combination and westerners just don't get it.


Here is a whole poem with shi as in the curt SHH when telling someone to be quite. The numbers next to it tells you the tone ( flat vs up and down, rising, descending, short etc.)

shi2 shi4 shi1 shi4 shi1 shi4 shi4 shi1. shi4 shi2 shi2 shi1. shi4 shi2 shi2 shi4 shi4 shi4 shi1 shi2 shi2. shi4 shi2 shi1 shi4 shi4 shi4 shi2. shi4 shi1 shi4 shi4 shi4 shi4 shi4 shi4 shi2 shi1. shi4 shi3 shi4 shi3 shi4 shi2 shi1 shi4 shi4 shi4 shi2 shi4 shi2 shi1shi1. shi4 shi2 shi4 shi2 shi4 shi1. shi4 shi3 shi4 shi4 shi2 shi4 shi2 shi4 shi4. shi4 shi3 shi4 shi2 shi4 shi2 shi1 shi1 shi2 shi2. shi3 shi4 shi3 shi2 shi1 shi1 shi2 shi2 shi2 shi1 shi1 shi4 shi4 shi4 shi4

Here is a translation by Ti Fa-kuan:

"A poet by the name of Shih Shih living in a stone den was fond of lions. As he had taken an oath to eat ten lions, he went out to the market every day at ten o'clock in order to look for lions. It was at the time when all of a sudden ten lions came to the market and also Shih Shih went to the market at once realizing these ten lions. Relying on his (bow and) arrows, he caused these ten lions to pass away. Shih picked up the corpses of these ten lions, and as he went to the stone den, the stone chamber was damp. Shih had the stone den wiped by his servant. As the stone den was cleaned, it was the time that Shih began trying to eat the meal of these ten lions' corpses and he began to realize that these ten dead lions infact were ten stone lions' corpses and he tried to get rid of this matter."

When I read this poem to westerners they just hear me saying shi over 70 times.