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, that you comb through annals
of history but not a single annal? 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 the preacher praught?
If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a
humanitarian eat? If you wrote a letter, perhaps
you also bote your tongue?

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?
Park on driveways and drive on parkways?

How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same,
while a wise man and wise guy are opposites?
How can overlook and oversee be opposites, while
quite a lot and quite a few are alike? How can the
weather be hot as hell one day and cold as hell
another?

Have you noticed that we talk about certain things
only when they are absent? Have you ever seen a
horseful carriage or a strapful gown? Met a sung
hero or experienced requited love? Have you ever
run into someone who was combobulated, gruntled,
ruly or peccable?

And where are all those people who ARE spring
chickens or who would ACTUALLY hurt a fly?

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 clock goes off by going on.