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01/30/2005 01:13:57 AM · #1 |
I love this poem -- it sums up the insanity that is the English Language perfectly!
I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you
On hiccough, thorough, slough, and through.
Well don't! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps.
Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard but sounds like bird.
And dead: it's said like bed, not bead,
For goodness sake don't call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt).
A moth is not a moth as in mother
Nor both as in bother, nor broth as in brother,
And here is not a match for there,
Nor dear and fear, for bear and pear.
And then there's dose and rose and lose--
Just look them up--and goose and choose
And cork and work and card and ward
And font and front and word and sword
And do and go, then thwart and cart,
Come, come! I've hardly made a start.
A dreadful Language? Why man alive!
I learned to talk it when I was five.
And yet to write it, the more I tried,
I hadn't learned it at fifty-five.
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01/30/2005 01:37:27 AM · #2 |
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01/30/2005 02:06:44 AM · #3 |
Too true! And it doesn't event take into account other quirks, for example: Why do we park on a driveway and drive on a parkway? Shouldn't it be the other way around?
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01/30/2005 02:14:31 AM · #4 |
thanks for posting that terry!
i have saved it for my german friends who are learning english and
they always have hundreds of questions. |
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01/30/2005 02:38:05 AM · #5 |
| Check out this different and longer one at the Simplified Spelling Society's web site. |
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01/30/2005 03:11:27 AM · #6 |
Hmmm ... this seems a suitable place for a plug for the OEDILF the Omnificent English Dictionary In Limerick Form.
We are up to words beginning with Au and Av now ... you are welcome to register and contribute to this worldwide collaborative project. |
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01/30/2005 03:45:18 AM · #7 |
thanks for the link general, i like this one........
Limerick #2471 alisma
By grahamlester
Submitted: 28 Jan 2005
Defines: alisma
Status: approved Young Froggie went courting one day
With a pure white alisma bouquet.
He said, Marry me, do.
She replied, Marry you?
That's pondweed, you cheapskate! No way!
Alisma: a common water plantain with tiny white flowers.
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01/30/2005 04:38:56 AM · #8 |
| Why, when you send something on a ship, you call it a cargo, but when you send it on a truck (car) you call it a shipment ? |
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01/30/2005 05:21:43 AM · #9 |
If Cooks cook,
and Waiter wait,
what do Butlers do? |
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01/30/2005 07:45:17 AM · #10 |
When the written language will be phonetically.... things will become so dull.
Don't you think?
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01/30/2005 07:51:14 AM · #11 |
If Cooks cook,
and Waiter wait,
what do Butlers do?
wait and boss the cooks around! |
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01/30/2005 08:23:30 AM · #12 |
Why does one recite at a play and play at a recital?
-Terry
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01/30/2005 08:51:49 AM · #13 |
| That's cute. Too much of a tongue-twisting-mind-boggler for a Sunday morning for me, though. That's why using a spellchecker is useless at times. |
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01/30/2005 09:01:11 AM · #14 |
Originally posted by ClubJuggle:
Why does one recite at a play and play at a recital?
-Terry |
For the same grammatical reasons that we have a pair of panties but only one bra I assume... ;o)
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01/30/2005 10:17:38 AM · #15 |
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01/30/2005 10:22:56 AM · #16 |
Originally posted by Jinjit:
When the written language will be phonetically.... things will become so dull.
Don't you think? |
bulgarian written language is all phonetic, it's pretty cool, i'm learning it right now. |
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01/30/2005 01:29:30 PM · #17 |
| Very funny. During lunch on Friday we discussed languages and particularly how difficult English can be to learn (we noted tomb, bomb, comb, etc - Much the same as the subject poem). |
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01/30/2005 01:34:51 PM · #18 |
Does it bother anyone else that no matter how long she's been in the profession, a doctor still practices medicine? I want one that don't have to practice anymore...
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01/30/2005 02:00:24 PM · #19 |
| Terry: Who wrote that poem? |
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01/30/2005 02:08:59 PM · #20 |
There's a program which makes the rounds on PBS during Pledge Weeks of approximately the same name as this thread ... it's very funny.
One of my favorites is how we drive home on the parkway so we can park in our driveway.
Another interesting site is Wordcraft |
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01/30/2005 02:16:08 PM · #21 |
Ever play with the Internet Anagram Server?
It was there I learned that "DPChallenge" is an anagram of "Glanced help."
-Terry
Message edited by author 2005-01-30 14:16:35.
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01/30/2005 02:28:47 PM · #22 |
Originally posted by ClubJuggle:
Ever play with the Internet Anagram Server?
It was there I learned that "DPChallenge" is an anagram of "Glanced help."
-Terry |
This anagram server?
Some other links:
Etymologic (game)
Alanis Morissette lyric generator
Tongue-twisters
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01/30/2005 02:40:58 PM · #23 |
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01/30/2005 02:44:56 PM · #24 |
A title of Pleonasms or Tautological Redundancies always catches my attention......... |
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01/30/2005 05:36:51 PM · #25 |
The phonetics used to match the written word in English. The phonetics changed - proof, the language was alive. The spelling, however, unlike other Indo-European languages did not. Thus the quirks.
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