You think English is easy???

[Fate Flyer]

My mom sent me this e-mail that I thought was funny and interesting that I wanted to share with you guys. :]




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?

Let's face it - English is a crazy 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.

[Kathryn Lacey]

I love this! It really amused me!

I heard that English is one of the more difficult languages to learn for people who speak a different native tongue. It makes me glad that my first language is English. XD

[xraineyesx]

Actually, Kathryn, I have heard the same thing. I know that even as an English speaker - and major! - just how complex of a language it is.

But thanks, Fate, for sharing this! It made me laugh, and I needed a good laugh at someone else's insanity other than my own.

[The Melancholy Spirit]

I've heard it as well, on several occassions. A couple times from English teachers back in school. Haha

Had a nice laugh at this myself. Thanks Fate! ^^

P.S. I still wish Finnish was my native tongue... lol

[Tartra]

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.

Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it's written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.

Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.

Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation's OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.

Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.

Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Feoffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.

Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.

Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.

Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.
Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.

Pronunciation -- think of Psyche!
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won't it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It's a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.

Finally, which rhymes with enough --
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

[xraineyesx]

I gave up reading that half-way through since it contained the entirety of the English language, further proving just how evilly designed English is to mess with us!

But it was pretty funny to laugh at how similar the spelling is and how none of the pronunciation makes any sense sometimes.

[SpaceWheeler2.0]

Fate: Awesome post. I laughed.

Tartra: I'll read that when I have more time

[Kalon Ordona II]

Both awesome.
English rocks! xD

[Guest]

When I learned in fourth grade that no English 'rule' existed with exceptions, I died a little inside. When I graduated from high school, I danced around the corpse of a 'proper' English language and laughed as I did with it as I wished.

[Dax]

I am going to have to disagree with you all on this.

Don't fool yourselves: English is by far, and I say this from experience, the easiest language out there (I am just taking into consideration languages from developed countries and who have a speaking population of a million or more). It is hard to master, but then again, so is every language.

Composition of words doesn't make a language hard, although it sure doesn't help. English is easy because there are very, very few grammatical rules that we apply in our everyday use of it. If you want a hard language, try German or French. NOW you will know what a truly uselessly difficult language with the phonetically illogical and useless use of letters is (German) and what it is to spend 30 minutes to grammatically disect a single sentence, and then figure out that you forgot to apply about 10 different rules, hence all your mistakes (French)... god I hate french.

Never forget, there is a reason that English is the most widely spoken language in the world!

So yah, I do think that English is easy.

That is not to say I didn't like what Fate posted! I still found it funny! I Just thought I would like to throw my opinion out there.

[Tartra]

You're a decade or two behind on that one, Dax. English is the number one business language but not for the world overall.

[Dax]

Yah, and that is because it is the language that everyone undertsands/can learn without much effort.

Imagining if everyone had to learn Cantonnese. Ouch.

[Tartra]

On the bright side, if everyone knew Cantonese, we wouldn't have to learn French or German.

[Kalon Ordona II]

Spanish is easier! Spanish is so, so, so much easier.
But it's also less versatile.

It'd be the perfect candidate for a Common Tongue.
But English has the diversity to allow for any kind of composition. ^^
I haven't researched the statistics, but I'd hazard a guess that there are more book titles in English than in any other language.

[xraineyesx]

False. I'm fluent in German and though I don't speak French very well I can translate it easily. I'm also an English major.

German is the easiest of the three.

English is one of the hardest languages to learn in the world. Science said so.

If I could be a linguist, I would. Language is my speciality and my passion.

It's all a matter of perspective though. Language is like math. It's one big formula. Some formulas click easily with some people, and some with others. And some just don't click with it at all.

[Kalon Ordona II]

It'd be awesome to be a native speaker of a bunch of languages. Then you wouldn't have to worry about it. xD

Or they could just invent a universal translator. They did make a cell-phone, after all. ^^

[Dax]

... Actually we are all wrong.

Look what I stumbled upon. This is from Leximo, a kind of wikipedia for languages.

http://blog.leximo.org/2009/03/worlds-hardest-languages-to-learn.html

So, what I found by searching the web, I have constantly seen that the hardest languages to learn are either slavic or asian/middle eastern languages. English also seems to be many times in those lists, but apparently it is only because it has alot of words.

Although, German usually figured in the lists, and sometimes French was also there. (In other lists, not the link I posted)

I guess it really whittles down to individual cases and what your native language is. For example, learning a latin based language when your a native latin based speaker is easier than learning a Germanic based language if you are a native latin based speaker, etc. Then there is also the possibility that you can just be totally awesome at learning a language.

I just despise it, on the sites I was looking at I mean, how people say 'English is the hardest language in the world to learn', and just leaves it at that. I really need alot of convincing to believe that. Alot.

[Artorius]

As a Mandarin, Spanish, and of course English speaker, I believe Mandarin to be the hardest. However, it is eerily similiar to English in grammar. Its great when learning, but some words simply have about four to five different meanings and the pronunciation is a, excuse my language, bitch. Depending on how you pronoucne a word the meaning could be completely different! Ma and ma mean either a question word, mother, horse, or a couple other meanings. So I would agree that Asian languages are among the most difficult.

[Kalon Ordona II]

The trick to Mandarin--not that I speak more than a couple words--is the tones and, like you say, the different meanings of the word that you have to divine from the context. And many words have more than five. Some number higher than ten different meanings.

[Johncool]

Any language is easy if you know the basic stuff in that language and how to manage according to the situation.

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