Science Jokes

                          English is a Crazy Language
      
    
 From:    Charlie Indelicato
 
 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, that you
 comb through annals of history but not a single annal? 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 preacher praught? If a vegetarian eats
 vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? If you wrote a letter, perhaps
 you bote your tongue?
 
 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? Park on driveways and drive on parkways?
 
 How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and
 wise guy are opposites? How can overlook and oversee be opposites, while
 quite a lot and quite a few are alike? How can the weather be hot as hell
 one day and cold as hell another.
 
 Have you noticed that we talk about certain things only when they are
 absent? Have you ever seen a horseful carriage or a strapful gown? Met a
 sung hero or experienced requited love? Have you ever run into someone who
 was combobulated, gruntled, ruly or peccable? And where are all those
 people who ARE spring chickens or who would ACTUALLY hurt a fly?
 
 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 clock 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. And why, when I wind up my watch, I start it, but
 when I wind up this essay, I end it.