Wonderful English from Around the World

BrightBlessings

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Only the English could have invented this language...


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,
Then 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 Guineanor 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.
We park in a driveway and drive in a parkway.
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.


And, in closing, if Father is Pop, how come Mother’s not Mop?




******************​
 

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i need a Tylenol now.
 

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That's enough to make me wonder how non-native English speakers ever learn to speak it!:confused:
 

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For some really wonderful randomness... the list of words used to describe a large collection of animals.

Fun With Words: Collective Nouns

It's clear that English was not created based on a set of rules but grew and grew and melded with other languages and dialects as it developed. WIth traditional terms, plurals and conjugations allowed to remain, strict rules coming in second.
 

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That's enough to make me wonder how non-native English speakers ever learn to speak it!:confused:


Most native english speaking people can't speak it correctly either. :zip:
 

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That's enough to make me wonder how non-native English speakers ever learn to speak it!:confused:


Most native english speaking people can't speak it correctly either. :zip:
Agreed 100%..... like my co-workers who bring things out of the freezer to "un-thaw" them.:confused:
I hear that every day I work, and always do an internal:doh:
 

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Sound man enit :)

Steve
 

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Agreed 100%..... like my co-workers who bring things out of the freezer to "un-thaw" them.:confused:

Ohhh that is rich! Don't they mean "Take" and "Thaw"? Maybe "Unfreeze"?

:roflmao::roflmao:
 

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Ive always heard English is the hardest language to learn.

When you really start to think about and look at things like this, it's no wonder why.
 

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Ive always heard English is the hardest language to learn.

It really depends on what the learner's native language is. When I studied Korean in a class where there were people from all over the world,I found almost everyone from Europe could speak English,well or not,it's not a surprise to me though. As we were all exchange students,western people struggled to learn Korean while people from Japan or especially China made rapid stride. Like about 70% of Korean words originate from Chinese,western languages have got many similarities too,right? Maybe because they all came from Latin?
 

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For us foreigners it's not just how you write English. Quite often a word is pronounced in a way it's not possible to us foreigners to guess. Like many place names, for instance. Greenwich and Leicester are good examples; if I pronounce them according to the rules I learned in school, it's wrong.
 

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I learned most of my English from TV actually, at least the vocabulary, grammar at school. We (me and my girlfriend(she is from the States)) are always arguing what's more important, grammar or vocabulary. I'm going with vocabulary, 'couse you don't have to know every tense possible to speak, but if someone have poor vocabulary, trying to speak can be BIG problem. Sometimes and I have problems expressing my self, and it sucks.
 

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If I just knew how hard language English is...

:D
 

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XP
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XP
To be able to speak basic English is actually pretty easy. There is very little grammar - unlike e.g. in German, Greek or any Slavic language. The only difficulty is the pronunciation of some words because there seem to be no rules.
For advanced English, that is a different story. The language is very rich in words and idiomatic expressions. To retain all those is not easy.
 

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Vista, Windows7, Mint Mate, Zorin, Windows 8from 1.6GHz Duo to i7
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Learning English first also handicaps a person trying to learn nearly any other language, simply because the grammar is backwards from most other languages.
 
One of my favourites - how many different pronunciations of words with the string of letters "ough" in them can you find and assemble into a single coherent sentence?

No Googling.

Just a couple to get you started:
cough = pronounced "coff"
rough = pronounced "ruff"
fought = pronounced "fort"

"After we had fought, my cough was rougher".
 

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"The tough coughs as he ploughs the dough"
 

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Dell UltraSharp U2410 24in and Samsung 21 dual monitors
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Primary: Intel X-25M G2 160G SSD
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HDs in AHCI mode.
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Through a tough thorough thought we slapped down the dough and bought the iPad.

Then noticing our mistake, promptly returned it.

*note the last ones dough matches thorough and bought matches thought so This has only 4 different pronunciations of ough
 
Last edited:

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ASUS G60-RBBX05
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2nd Rig: Case: Rosewill BLACKHAWK Gaming ATX Mid Tower Computer Case

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