If you have ever wondered why we need editors, a forwarded email from a reader tells me why. English is simply a crazy language.
We’ll begin with a box, and the plural is boxes, but the plural of ox becomes oxen, not oxes. One fowl is a goose, but two are called geese, yet the plural of moose should never be meese. You may find a lone mouse or a nest full of mice, yet the plural of house is houses, not hice.
If the plural of man is always called men, why shouldn’t the plural of pan be called pen? If I speak of my foot and show you my feet, and I give you a boot, would a pair be called beet? If one is a tooth and a whole set are teeth, why shouldn’t the plural of booth be called beeth?
Then one may be that, and there would be those, yet hat in the plural would never be hose, and the plural of cat is cats, not cose. We speak of brother and also of brethren, but though we say mother, we never say methren. Then the masculine pronouns are he, his and him, but imagine the feminine: she, shis and shim.
There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger, nor apple or pine in pineapple. English muffins weren’t invented in England.
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.
If teachers taught, why didn’t preachers praught? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it? And why is it that writers write, but fingers don’t fing, grocers don’t groce and hammers don’t ham? Would I be wrong in thinking that the folks who grew up speaking English should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane?
In what other language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? We ship by truck but send cargo by ship. We have noses that run and feet that smell. We park in a driveway and drive on a parkway. And 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 complete 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. If Father is Pop, how come Mother’s not Mop? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, would I be wrong in assuming that a humanitarian is cannibalistic? Let’s give editors credit where credit is due.
Take care, ’cause we care.
barrie@barriehopkins.ca
519-986-4105