the english language....... =)

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?

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.

Quicksand works 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?
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? Is it an odd, or an end?
If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught?
If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?
Why 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.

Awsome stuff nan !

I figure our language has so many contradictions and oddities in it because we are probably, historically, one of the most diverse of races.

If you think about it, everyones had a piece of us almost. Ancient Britons, then all the various celtic and gaellic tribes from mainland Europe, the saxons and the angles (germans) then fought over us, pushing the remaining celts into wales and cornwall before becoming the anglo/saxons, then of course the Romans added a mediterranean flavor before leaving us to squabble and integrate with the dane/norse/scandinavian Vikings You can probably add a hint of syrian/turkish/ from the days of the crusades to the mix too. Possibly even some traces of Hebrew as the Judean heirarchy fled the romans and became integrated into the French nobility which subsequently invaded Britain too.

We are a mongrel race and I guess our language reflects that. Even to this day, areas and people in the northeast that were heavily influenced by the vikings (Wiseman), still use what are considered coloquial slang words in everyday speech that have more in common with the scandinavian languages and scottish gaelic than with modern English, and indeed, a large proportion of English people would have no idea what they meant.

Could it possibly be that Modern English has become the dominant language because it contains aspects and parts of words that many other nations recognise from their own, so can adapt to more readily? I know from speaking Flemish that a lot of words are very similar in sound to their English counterparts. Does the same thing occur with the Scandinavian languages?

"Could it possibly be that Modern English has become the dominant language because it contains aspects and parts of words that many other nations recognise from their own,"

Thought it was because We had the last and biggest empire, before they went out of fashion1

Have you ever noticed how only the British deliberately misprounce English; no other nation does that "Methinks".

Bladeheart wrote:

"
Have you ever noticed how only the British deliberately misprounce English; no other nation does that "Methinks".

I try not to but its that bastardised crap we have thrown over our tv channels that comes from america etc. my language use used to be great 14 years of working around east end londoners and also the crap in our media has perverted it now though :(

I do wonder id the original post was written by an American too... the use of Eggplant and not Aubergine..... and we certainly don't have candies...

well shad, the scandinavian languages has some reminicense of ol norse tongue; the closest we have today is icelandish, as they deliberately, try to keep their language clean of new foreighn words, and therefor invent new words for stuff like computers and mobilphones and other modern things. it also has stolen words from german, and is as far as i know considered part of the german language pool, but has also with no bad concience stolen from french, latin, german, english and what not lol.

heh , the use of Eggplant and not Aubergine; see thats another problem for us poor foreighners, we have no idea if its british english or american english, and same goes for candy vs sweets, as i hurried to find out after reading this

Lol and they say dyslexia comes from some malfunction of the brain, its just the Enlgish language, at last its me who can spell and the english just confuses