5/10/09

English is Crazy. Part II


Sometimes you have to believe that all English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane.

In what other language do people drive in a parkway and park in a driveway?

In what other language do people recite at a play and play at a recital?

In what other language do people ship by truck and send cargo by ship?

In what other language can your nose run and your feet smell?

How can the weather be hot as hell one day and cold as hell the next? How can the expressions "What's going on?" and "What's coming off?" mean exactly the same thing?!?

If bad is the opposite of good, hard the opposite of soft, and up the opposite of down, why are badly and goodly, hardly and softy, and upright and downright not opposing pairs? If harmless actions are the opposite of harmful nonactions, why are shameful and shameless behavior the same and pricey objects less expensive than priceless ones.


If uplift is the same as lift up, why are upset and set up opposite in meaning? Why are pertinent and impertinent, and famous and infamous neither opposites nor the same?


Why is it that when the sun or the moon or the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible; that when I clip a coupon from a newspaper I separate it, but when I clip a coupon to a newspaper, I fasten it?


English is a crazy language.

How can it be easier to assent than to dissent but harder to ascend than to descend? Why it is that a man with hair on his head has more hair than a man with hairs on his head; that if you decide to be bad forever, you choose to be bad for good; and that if you choose to wear only your left shoe, then your left one is right and your right one is left? Right?

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