Verbally Insane

Verbally insane--that's what we writers are. This was posted today by Rachel Smith over at ACFW and I thought you might enjoy it. I know I did. So here goes. Thanks, Rachel.

Asylum for the Verbally Insane
uthor unknown

We'll begin with a box, and the plural is boxes,
But the plural of ox becomes oxen, not oxes.
One fowl is a goose, but two are called geese,
Yet the plural of moose should never be meese.
You may find a lone mouse or a nest full of mice,
Yet the plural of house is houses, not hice.

If the plural of man is always called men,
Why shouldn't the plural of pan be called pen?
If I speak of my foot and show you my feet,
And I give you a boot, would a pair be called beet?
If one is a tooth and a whole set are teeth,
Why shouldn't the plural of booth be called beeth?

Then one may be that, and three would be those,
Yet hat in the plural would never be hose,
And the plural of cat is cats, not cose.
We speak of a brother and also of brethren,
But though we say mother, we never say methren.
Then the masculine pronouns are he, his and him,
But imagine the feminine: she, shis and shim!

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 . 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. 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 folks who grew up speaking English should be committed to an
asylum for the verbally insane.

In what other language do people recite at a play and play at a
recital? We ship by truck but send cargo by ship. We have noses that
run and feet that smell. And 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.

So if Father is Pop, how come Mother isn't Mop?

And that is just the beginning--even though this is the end


This was followed up with a couple of really funny quotes.

"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that the English language is as pure as a crib-house whore. It not only borrows words from other languages; it has on occasion chased other languages down dark alley-ways, clubbed them unconscious and rifled their pockets for new vocabulary. "
­James Nicoll

"Modern English is the Wal-Mart of languages: convenient, huge, hard to avoid, superficially friendly, and devouring all rivals in its eagerness to expand."
­Mark Abley

Rachel Smith- writing as Rachel Wilder