From The Mind of Merc - English

Sometimes I find my mind wandering over various eclectic topics and occasionally I am inspired to write some of them down. Today I was thinking about the English language and, in particularly, how it just doesn’t make any sense.

Want to know what I mean? Try this sentence:

Laid is pronounced like paid but not said and said is pronounced like bread but not bead and bead is pronounced like lead but not lead.

See what I mean?

I remember thinking at school that it was easier for students from other countries to learn English until my German teacher (who also taught English to German students) pointed out the unpredictability of verbs.

For example, for the past tense of most verbs, you just add ‘ed’ – ‘I walk’, ‘I walked’; ‘I look’, ‘I looked’. It gets a little more complicated with verbs like ‘eat’ (‘I ate’) and ‘run’ (‘I ran’) and then the rule book is just thrown out the window with verbs like ‘go’ – ‘I go’ which doesn’t become ‘I goed’ - instead it becomes ‘I went’(!)

Then you’ve got plurals trying to trick you.

For example: ‘child’ becomes ‘children’; ‘person’ becomes ‘people’; ‘tooth’ becomes ‘teeth’ and ‘mouse’ becomes ‘mice’. But then ‘fish’ becomes… well… ‘fish’. Just as ‘sheep’ becomes ‘sheep’

And then there’s words where we just don’t play fair:

For example:

In French, it’s ananas; in German, it’s Ananas; in Dutch, it’s Ananas; in Latin, it’s ananas; in Russian, it’s ananas. In fact, in most languages it’s some variation of ananas. And yet, in English, it’s pineapple(!)

There’s also the issue of words changing their meaning over time so that they can actually mean completely opposite things (contronyms).

For example:

Chuffed   - definition 1) delighted, pleased, satisfied

               - definition 2) annoyed, displease, disgruntled

Clip         - definition 1) to cut apart

               - definition 2) to attach together

I mean, how does it make sense that tear and tier sound the same but tear and tear don’t?

Try this one:

- Womb (ok?)

- Tomb (with me so far)

- Bomb (boom!)

Let’s move on. I’m worried that you’re not content with this content. Or that you object to that object. Maybe you need to read what you read again. You’ll have to excuse me there is no excuse for this shameful use of homographs.

But why stop when I’m on a roll:

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) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear..

19) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.

20) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

There’re also homophones – words that ARE spelled differently yet sound the same.

For example: You should warn him it shouldn’t be worn like that.

Or how about the infamous silent letter. Like the k in knight? G in reign? Or b in plumb?

Here’s a (not-so) helpful guide to English language:

Word: Queue

Pronounced: Kyoo

Rule on how to pronounce: Write down 5 letters. Only pronounce the first one.

Make sense to you?

Funnily enough it transpires there are actually rules to help understand why English is the way it is. (And you've probably been applying it while you've been reading this. It is that English has alternating stress patterns that indicate whether related words are nouns (stress first syllable) or verbs (stress second syllable)

Noun: Record; Verb: Record

Noun: Contract; Verb: Contract

Easy when you know why

Also, did you know that adjectives in English have a set order that they must be in. this order is: opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose Noun. Anything else just sounds odd.

For example you can have “lovely little old rectangular green French whittling knife” but mix up that order and you sound like a maniac

Not that that (haha) actually helps at all

And don’t even get me started on spelling and grammar because that just opens up the whole issue of using ‘I before E except after C’ – which btw (and no I’m not getting started on abbreviations) is a terrible rule as there are about 900 words that DON’T obey it(!)

But above all just remember that English can be weird. Yet it can be understood through tough thorough thought, though.

And finally, ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to finish with a little poem from 1920. (Read it aloud if you dare)

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.
Foeffer 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!!!