We’ll begin with a box, and the plural is boxes,
\nBut the plural of ox becomes oxen, not oxes.
\nOne fowl is a goose, but two are called geese,
\nYet the plural of moose should never be meese.
\nYou may find a lone mouse or a nest full of mice,
\nYet the plural of house is houses, not hice.<\/p>\n
\nIf the plural of man is always called men,
\nThen shouldn’t the plural of pan be called pen?
\nIf I speak of my foot and show you my feet,
\nAnd I give you a boot, would a pair be called beet?
\nIf one is a tooth and a whole set are teeth,
\nWhy shouldn’t the plural of booth be called beeth?
\nThen one may be that, and three would be those,
\nYet hat in the plural would never be hose,
\nAnd the plural of cat is cats, not cose..
\nWe speak of a brother and also of brethren,
\nBut though we say mother, we never say methren.
\nThen the masculine pronouns are he, his and him,
\nBut imagine the feminine: she, shis and shim!
\nLet’s face it – English is a crazy language.
\nThere is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger;
\nneither apple nor pine in pineapple.
\nEnglish muffins weren’t invented in England .
\nWe take English for granted, but if we explore its paradoxes,
\nwe find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square,
\nand a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.
\nAnd why is it that writers write but fingers don’t fing,
\ngrocers don’t groce and hammers don’t ham?
\nDoesn’t it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend.
\nIf you have a bunch of odds and ends
\nand get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?
\nIf teachers taught, why didn’t preachers praught?
\nIf a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?
\nSometimes I think all the folks who grew up speaking English
\nshould be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane.
\nIn what other language do people recite at a play and play at a recital?
\nWe ship by truck but send cargo by ship.
\nWe have noses that run and feet that smell.
\nWe park in a driveway and drive in a parkway.
\nAnd how can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same,
\nwhile a wise man and a wise guy are opposites?
\nYou have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language
\nin which your house can burn up as it burns down,
\nin which you fill in a form by filling it out,
\nand in which an alarm goes off by going on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cultural-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1322\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}