Verbal Insanity

Let’s face it — English is a crazy language. It sometimes seems all English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane.

There is no egg in eggplant, no ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren’t invented in England nor french fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies, while sweetbreads, which aren’t sweet, are meat.

Among the language’s paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor 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? One index, two 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?

In what other 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”?

Задание. Исправьте предложения, не меняя их смысл:

1. The bandage was wound around the wound.

2. The farm was used to produce produce.

3. The dump was so full its manager had to refuse more refuse.

4. He could lead if he would get the lead out.

5. The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.

6. Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.

7. A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.

8. I did not object to the object.

9. The insurance for the invalid was invalid.

10. The oarsmen had a row about how to row.

11. They were too close to the door to close it.

12. The buck does funny things when does are present.

13. A knitter and a sewer fell into a sewer line.

14. The farmer fed his sow and went to the field to sow wheat.

15. The wind was too strong to wind the sail.

16. When I saw the tear in the painting, I shed a tear.

17. I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.

18. How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?