It's the lunacy of the English language. A retired teacher of English once wrote: 'English is a crazy
language.
There is no egg in eggplants, 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 it's 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, two geese.
So one moose, two meese? Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? . If teachers
taught, why don'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.
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.
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