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? 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 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
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. 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.