Once Upon A TYPE…

I was sorting out my things and throwing all the papers that I don’t need when I saw a brochure from Norton University here in Cambodia and read an article about english. It goes like this

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 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?

Then one maybe 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 pronounce are he, his and him. But imagine the feminine: she, shis and shim!

Let’s face it: English is a crazy language.

There is neither egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple or 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 work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea or is it a pig.

And why is it that writers write but fingers do not fing, grocers do not groce and hammers do not ham?

Doesn’t it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend.

If you have a bunch of adds 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?