SO, YOU THOUGHT YOU WERE TOUGH ENOUGH TO TRY TO LEARN ENGLISH?

This little treatise on the lovely language we share is only for the brave. It was passed on by a linguist, original author unknown.

Reasons why the English language is so hard to learn:

1) The bandage was wound around the wound.
2) The farm was used to produce produce.
3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
4) We must polish the Polish furniture.
5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.
6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to
present the present.
8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.
9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
10) I did not object to the object.
11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
13) They were too close to the door to close it.
14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.
15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail
18) After a number of injections my jaw got number.
19) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.
20) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
21) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

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, is not a race at all.

That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.

PS. - Why doesn't "Buick" rhyme with "quick"

Very funny! I love this kind of stuff. I'm a native English speaker and had to read some of the lines slowly to get it right. Have you ever seen the comedian Gallagher? (He's the one that bashes open watermelons) He does a really funny skit that is along these lines.

Hey Sofia, grrrrreeaaaaat stuff there.

I am sure many an English teacher will be pulling their hair out when they come across this one

Saludos,
jer...

One could mention that it is odd that one parks on a driveway, and drives on a parkway. And pays for a freeway!

and why is it that most highways are at ground level and not really high

Saludos,
jer...

That was great stuff, but what many English speakers don't realize is that the stress changes the meaning of the word. It is something that we grow up listening to everyday and we don't even realize it.

Here's another one.

Why does a house BURN DOWN, but a car BURN UP?

Tee hee!

Why do you fill OUT a form instead of filling it IN

This is fun !

Saludos,
jer...

English is so bizarre the word *ghoti* could logically (illogically) be read as fish:

Take the gh from enough
The o from women
and the ti from education

But why aren't Kansas and Arkansas prounounced the same?

Have you all seen this one? I have used it as a dictation text with my advanced English classes. Have fun reading it!

English is Tough Stuff! We've all cursed written English as capricious and sentenced American Pronunciation Rules as but half-truths at best. Examples and practice always seem better than studying worn and obsolete phonetic guides.

Multi-national personnel at North Atlantic Treaty Organization headquarters near Paris found English to be an easy language ... until they tried to pronounce it. To help them discard an array of accents, the verses below were devised. After trying them, a Frenchman said he'd prefer six months at hard labor to reading six lines aloud. Try them yourself.

(Read aloud, with a friend!)
(After all, laughter is the true universal language!)

The Chaos

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.

Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it's written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.

Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.

Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation's OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.

Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.

Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Feoffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.

Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.

Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.

Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.

Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.

Pronunciation -- think of Psyche!
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won't it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It's a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.

Finally, which rhymes with enough --
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

Written by Dr. Gerald Nolst Trenite (1870-1946), a Dutch observer of English.

cute..........what about those of us struggling with Spanish ,any similar examples?

I like it...I like it. Great ice-breaker material for my classes.

Hey Jazzbo. Spanish is my second language so I don't have the cultural experience to tell you a bunch of similar types of funny/interesting stories, however there is one play with words type of riddle (acertijo)I remember from my brother in law that you might like. It goes like this:

Este banco esta ocupado por un padre y por un hijo.
El padre se llama Juan y el hijo ya te lo he dicho.
�C�mo se llama el hijo?

....Se llama 'Esteban'...His name is 'Esteban'

'EsteBan-co'....Este Banco....Esteban----co....Get it?

Here is another thing that can twist the minds of learners of English. DIALECTS. I am from Richmond, Virginia and African-American. Many people say African-Americans speak fast, and seometimes we do, especially in a lively conversation.

My mom's favorite expression was UP TO HELL. Here are some examples.

I don't wan't my pankcakes burnt up to hell.

I don't wan't my stuff broke up to hell.

My hair all puffed up to hell.

Three good examples, but when you think about it, how can something be up to hell, when hell is supposedly below us? Just soemthing to think about. I know some of you won't see the beauty in this, but you have to hear me say it to laugh.

I have a southern accent and I love it. I can go back and forth between registers without any problems. How I would speak to a co-worker is not how I speak to my family. Hey, everyone does it.

Shawn

Here is an English riddle that only works verbally --

What is black and white and read all over??

Answer: Newspaper

It works verbally since read is a homophone of red.

Hey, Shawn, do you speak Spanish with a Southern accent, too? I wish I could reproduce the phrase "sopa de tomate"(tomate soup) pronounced the way a kid who moved to Michigan from Arkansas did! The vowels were all just looooonger.
As for "up to hell", the variation I was raised with was "all to hell"

Viva grits!