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English - What A Language

The following short essay has circulated around the Internet. It points out apparently illogical aspects of English. However many of these examples are caused by a process of change in language, which has developed organically over thousands of years, and any expectation that there should be logic behind our grammar or our vocabulary is likely to be dashed.

For example we can joke that a fork has four prongs so a fork with three prongs should be called threek. However that would assume that "fork" means "item of cutlery defined by having four tines" whereas in fact "fork" originally described a forked stake, as a branch forks off the main tree or a road splits from another creating a fork. The number of prongs is irrelevant and the earliest definition includes only two. It is not at all related to the number four.

Similarly the Turkey has no relationship with the popultry of the same name. It was an early error to say that it came from that country.

After reading the piece below reflect on the examples given and comment on whether they are really as illogical as the writer suggests. Is the writer making illogical connections - for example saying there is a connection of meaning between two words simply because there is a similarity in sound, or suggesting there should be uniformity of past tense because two words appear similar in the present tense?

Find other examples of apparent paradox in English and explain these too.

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. Nor is a turkey from Turkey or a Swede from Sweden.

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 thru 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 preachers 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?

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.

After you have studied the passage and completed the task, is English, in your view, as illogical as the writer claims?

Do his arguments stand up to scrutiny?

 

  

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Language Change