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Do You Think English is Easy???

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?

- - Original source unknown




- SL

Wow! SL its no wonder I can't spell, so I guess I will sit a spell!
Virginia

That was a good one Silver Lady. It's more fun to read than be read. Have to run now, I have a run in my pantyhose but I can't complain because they're weeks old which is a pretty good run for nylons.Hugs

Love
Jeannie

PS. Did you ever see the movie Soldiers Girl Silver Lady? Quite interesting,disarming,tragic and provocative. I believe the way it makes one feel inside speaks volumes. It separates the women from the girls.

Also "stolen" from the web...

"Let's face it - English is a strange 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"

You lovers of the English language might enjoy this .

There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that is "UP."

It's easy to understand UP, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP? At a meeting, why does a topic come UP? Why do we speak UP and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report? We call UP our friends. And we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver, we warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen. We lock UP the house and some guys fix UP the old car. At other times the little word has real special meaning. People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses. To be dressed is one thing, but to be dressed UP is special.

And this UP is confusing: A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP. We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night.

We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP! To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP, look the word UP in the dictionary. In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4th of the page and can add UP to about thirty definitions. I f you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used. It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don't give UP, you may wind UP with a hundred or more. When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP. When the sun comes out we say it is clearing UP . When it rains, it wets the earth and often messes things UP. When it doesn't rain for awhile, things dry UP. One could go on and on, but I'll wrap it UP, for now my time is UP, so........... it is time to shut UP.....!

Oh . . . one more thing: What is the first thing you do in the morning & the last thing you do at night? U-P"

And the I before E except after C rule is just WEIRD!

Hi all,

It's the verb tenses that get to me sometimes, as in (and I'm not even sure if I can get this one right): "Had you not been being so impolite, I would have had been having breakfast."

Yeah, English may be tough to figure out sometimes, but just imagine if, as in French, you had to throw accents and gender into the mix! It's beyond me why, in a (feminine) letter, the (masculine) paragraphs are written in a (feminine) ink flowing from a (masculine) pen on a (feminine) page. No wonder I'm gender-confused.

Love,
CJ

THE HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

Owen Alun and Brendan O'Corraidhe

In the beginning there was an island off the coast of Europe. It had no name, for the natives had no language, only a collection of grunts and gestures that roughly translated to:
"Hey!", "Gimme!", and "Pardon me, but would you happen to have any wood?"
Then the Romans invaded it and called it Britain, because the natives were "blue, nasty, br(u->i)tish and short." This was the start of the importance of "u" (and its mispronounciation) to the language. After building some roads, killing off some of the nasty little blue people and walling up the rest, the Romans left, taking the language instruction manual with them.
The British were bored so they invited the barbarians to come over (under Hengist) and "Horsa 'round" a bit. The Angles, Saxons, and Jutes brought slightly more refined vocal noises. All of the vocal sounds of this primitive language were onomatopoetic, being derived from the sounds of battle. Consonants were derived from the sounds of weapons striking a foe. ("Sss" and "th" for example are the sounds of a draw cut, "k" is the sound of a solidly landed axe blow, "b", "d", are the sounds of a head dropping onto rock and sod respectively, and "gl" is the sound of a body splashing into a bog. Vowels (which were either gargles in the back of the throat or sharp exhalations) were derived from the sounds the foe himself made when struck.
The barbarians had so much fun that decided to stay for post-revel. The British, finding that they had lost future use of the site, moved into the hills to the west and called themselves Welsh.
The Irish, having heard about language from Patrick, came over to investigate. When they saw the shiny vowels, they pried them loose and took them home. They then raided Wales and stole both their cattle and their vowels, so the poor Welsh had to make do with sheep and consonants. ("Old Ap Ivor hadde a farm, L Y L Y W! And on that farm he hadde somme gees. With a dd dd here and a dd dd there...")
To prevent future raids, the Welsh started calling themselves "Cymry" and gave even longer names to their villages. They figured if no one could pronounce the name of their people or the names of their towns, then no one would visit them. (The success of the tactic is demonstrated still today. How many travel agents have YOU heard suggest a visit to scenic Llyddumlmunnyddthllywddu?
Meantime, the Irish brought all the shiny new vowels home to Erin. But of course they didn't know that there was once an instruction manual for them, so they scattered the vowels throughout the language purely as ornaments.
Most of the new vowels were not pronounced, and those that were were pronounced differently depending on which kind of consonant they were either preceding or following.
The Danes came over and saw the pretty vowels bedecking all the Irish words. "Ooooh!" they said.
They raided Ireland and brought the vowels back home with them. But the Vikings
couldn't keep track of all the Irish rules so they simply pronounced all the vowels "oouuoo."
In the meantime, the French had invaded Britain, which was populated by descendants of the Germanic Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. After a generation or two, the people were speaking German with a French accent and calling it English. Then the Danes invaded again, crying
"Oouuoo! Oouuoo!," burning abbeys, and trading with the townspeople.
The Britons that the Romans hadn't killed intermarried with visiting Irish and became Scots. Against the advice of their travel agents, they decided to visit Wales. (The Scots couldn't read the signposts that said, "This way to LLyddyllwwyddymmllwylldd," but they could smell sheep a league away.) The Scots took the sheep home with them and made some of them into haggis. What they made with the others we won't say, but Scots are known to this day for having hairy legs.
The former Welsh, being totally bereft, moved down out of the hills and into London. Because they were the only people in the Islands who played flutes instead of bagpipes, they were called Tooters. This made them very popular. In short order, Henry Tooter got elected King and begin popularizing ornate, unflattering clothing.
Soon, everybody was wearing ornate, unflattering clothing, playing the flute, speaking German with a French accent, pronouncing all their vowels "oouuoo" (which was fairly easy given the French accent), and making lots of money in the wool trade. Because they were rich, people smiled more (remember, at this time, "Beowulf" and "Canterbury Tales" were the only tabloids, and gave generally favorable reviews even to Danes). And since it is next to impossible to keep your vowels in the back of your throat (even if you do speak German with a French accent) while smiling and saying "oouuoo" (try it, you'll see what I mean), the Great Vowel Shift came about and transformed the English language. The very richest had their vowels shifted right out in front of their teeth. They settled in Manchester and later in Boston.
There were a few poor souls who, cut off from the economic prosperity of the
wool trade, continued to swallow their vowels. They wandered the countryside in misery and despair until they came to the docks of London, where their dialect devolved into the incomprehensible language known as Cockney. Later, it was taken overseas and further brutalized by merging it with Dutch and Italian to create Brooklynese.
That's what happened, you can check for yourself. But I advise you to just take our word for it.

Copyright © 1994 Corrie Bergeron and Ben Tucker all rights reserved

Permissions: This may be reproduced in SCA newsletters for non- commercial purposes only.(i.e., If you make any money off of it, send us a cut. <g>)
Owen Alun is a wandering Cornish poet and harper whose travels have taken him to EVERY group in the Northshield. Ben Tucker helps keep the St. Paul School District moving into the Information Age. (He recently wired his elementary school into the Internet so the kids can get on-line!)
Brendan O Corraidhe is a wandering Irish singer and storyteller. Corrie Bergeron is the design coordinator for the next generation of PLATO educational software.

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Hugs,

Lydia

That was good Lydia. I learned something. I must thank Owen Alun the wandering Cornish Poet for inventing those little delicious game hens. I love them!
As for you CJ. I hate verbs. I'm tense enough without them. I listen to Eddie Van Halens "Eruption" cranked to the max just to relax! That's easy listening for me.Hugs.

Love
Jeannie

PS. CJ. Keep this between you and me. Don't tell anyone but I'm the only sane person left on this planet. I consistently have a nightmare where everyone vanishes on the planet. I search and search and get to a cliff overlooking the Atlantic ocean. I see this tall,blond haired woman approaching and I'm so excited. As she comes closer I see it's Ann Coulter. I do what any self respecting person would do and jump to my death.

PtuthBrrrrpth (rasberry/bronx cheer) I thought you were gonna say you pushed her over!!! You left the planet unimproved!!!!

I couldn't push her over. She's way bigger than me! My only hope is when I jump off the cliff I land on her to put her out of her misery! She's out of her freaking mind!Gotta go. I'm cooking for the monkeys again! Hope you all have a great fourth of July. I'm gong to a party on Saturday with some GG friends and staying over. Monday is a party at my house with my kids and The Warden. Mini said she will bring some chicken Satay that I will have to grill. What a Sweety. I try to be positive. Maybe I'll get hit by a bus on Sunday night! Hugs


Love
Jeannie

Thanks Lydia, what a great story!
thanks again,
Virginia

DonnaT wrote:And the I before E except after C rule is just WEIRD!

Especially when your name is Keith.