YOUR MOUTH DEPT.
Holes In The English Tongue
y regarded opinion on linguistics rests on the premise that there's nothing more beautiful than romantic poetry or prose recited in the Classic Castillian Spanish while holding a long stem rose between one's teeth... in the style of Casiodoro Reina from way back then, before the hills got dusty. Unfortunately, there's not too many of us who can even differentiate a false cognate from a preterite conjugation. Hence our need to meticulously study that linguistic tangled web we weave... The ENGLISH LANGUAGE!.

English is the most widely used language in the history of our planet. One in every seven humans can speak it. More than half of the world's books and three quarters of international mail is in English. Of all the languages, it has the largest vocabulary - perhaps as many as TWO MILLION words, a feat for a tongue of 26 letters. Nonetheless, let's face it - English is a wild, crazy and unpredictable language. That's bad... er, I mean, good... that is to say... e.g. great... really... Awh, never mind that.

What about words like "rough","tough", "though" and "through" (or is it threw?)? They all end the same way but are pronounced differently just to antagonize us Puerto Ricans and other denizens of the Foreign Kingdom. Oh, there's also "now", "know" and "how" and "low" and "bow" and "bou"... ad libitum, ad libitum, per saecula saeculorum. AAAARGH!

¡Oye... What about English muffins? They weren't invented in England nor French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat. Quicksand works 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, 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, that you comb through the annals of history but not a single annal? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it? An odd or an end?

¡Oye...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? Park on driveways and drive on parkways?

How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? If you wrote a letter, perhaps you bote your tongue?

¡Mira... How can overlook and oversee be opposites, while quite a lot and quite a few are alike? How can the weather be hot as hell one day and cold as hell another? Have you noticed that we talk about certain things only when they are absent? Have you ever seen a horseful carriage or a strapful gown? Met a sung hero or experienced requited love? Have you ever run into someone who was dis-combobulated, grunted, ruly or peccable? And where are all those people who ARE spring chickens or who would ACTUALLY hurt a fly?

Places where English spoken

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 out and in which an alarm clock goes off by going on. English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race (which, of course, isn't a race at all).

That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible. And why, when I wind up my watch, I start it, but when I wind up this essay, I end it! ¡AY CARAMBA!

Peace and Prosperity,

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donjibaro@gmail.com
Don Jíbaro "Whodatman" Barbanegra

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