the absurdity that is english...

I had read this one a while ago and enjoyed it. I recently came across it again recently when it was posted through a mailing list that I am on. Still a great read:

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 is houses, not hice.

If the plural of man is always called men,
Then shouldn't the plural of pan be called pen?
If I speak of my foot and show you my feet,
And I give you a boot, would a pair be called beet?
If one is a tooth and a whole set are teeth,
Why shouldn't the plural of booth be called beeth?

Then one may be that, and three would be those,
Yet hat in the plural would never be hose,
And the plural of cat is cats, not cose.
We speak of a brother and also of brethren,
But though we say mother, we never say methren.
Then the masculine pronouns are he, his and him,
But imagine the feminine: she, shis and shim!

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 ...

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?
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 folks who grew up speaking English
should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane.

In what other language do people recite at a play and play at a recital?
We ship by truck but send cargo by ship.
We have noses that run and feet that smell.
We park in a driveway and drive in a parkway.
And 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.

And, in closing, if Father is Pop, how come Mother's not Mop?

I WOULD LIKE TO ADD THAT IF PEOPLE FROM POLAND ARE CALLED POLES THEN PEOPLE FROM HOLLAND SHOULD BE HOLES

AND THE GERMANS GERMS!!!

of luddites and euphemisms...

... of some new words encountered, researched, understood and learnt:

Luddite: [n. LUH-dite] The noun Luddite specifically refers to one of a group of early 19th century English workmen who were campaigning against the automation of the power loom. In the modern context, it refers to an opponent of technological progress.

Etymology: The original Luddites claimed to be led by one "King Ludd" (also known as "General Ludd" or "Captain Ludd") whose signature appears on a "workers' manifesto" of the time. King Ludd was based on the earlier Ned Ludd, who some believed to have destroyed two large stocking frames in the village of Antsey, Leicestershire in 1779. At that time in England, machine breaking could lead to heavy penalties or even execution, which might have led some to use fictitious names for protection.

In a slightly more removed context, Elton John on stage at American Idol Gives Back last week used the the word to refer to his ability to bumble through technology when he couldn't recall the website address of the AIDS Foundation he help set up. "I'm such a Luddite," he said. "I love that; some of the most famous people are so technologically challenged. Makes me feel better".

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Euphemism: [n. yoo-fuh-miz-uhm] 1. the substitution of a mild, indirect, or vague expression for one thought to be offensive, harsh, or blunt; 2. the expression so substituted: e.g. “To pass away” is a euphemism for “to die.”

Etymology: The word euphemism comes from the Greek word euphemo, meaning "auspicious/good/fortunate speech/kind" which in turn is derived from the Greek root-words eu, (good/well) + pheme (speech/speaking). The eupheme was originally a word or phrase used in place of a religious word or phrase that should not be spoken aloud; etymologically, the eupheme is the opposite of the blaspheme (evil-speaking). The term euphemism itself was used as a euphemism by the ancient Greeks, meaning 'to keep a holy silence' (speaking well by not speaking at all).

I have to admit that I had never really known the true definition of the word, Euphemism. Now, I do!

245 mb and counting...

You are currently using 245 MB (3%) of your 7434 MB.

That's what it says on the bottom of my gmail screen. So gone are the days when Hotmail offered 1MB of space for mail storage. And then, they upped it to 2MB but only because Yahoo! did too. And the race was on. But none of them ever came close to gmail.

7GB is a hellava lot of space to be storing email. And the number continues to grow.

WOW...

ind-lish...

This curiousity started out sometime last week while at dinner with some friends, where amongst them, was an Indian national. Since the rest were Malaysian, we had a good time giving the Indian a hard time...

English-speaking Indians, if you have never come across one before, are as articulate as they are verbose... a very lethal combination. And I believe that this is one of the reasons why I tend to be cautious about novels written by Indian writers.

Don't get me wrong, I think they have an excellent grip of the language, better than many of the English themselves. My gripe is that they tend to over-do the verbosity when simpler words should sometimes suffice.

But what is stranger is the evolution of the English language in India, as spoken by English-speaking Indians. At dinner, we had pleasure in ribbing the poor girl from Bangalore about a word that is used in everyday business language there; prepone. As opposed to postpone. As in to reschedule a meeting to earlier instead of pushing it to later.

As strange as that word may be to us Malaysians, it doesn't change the fact that it is a word used commonly in India. And that was what I started wondering; how many of these new words have evolved in this fertile language pot into phrases or words that make perfect and concise sense. And some not quite so.

And then, by sheer coincidence, I came across another two today; quakening and updation. Quakening, as in the act of the earth shaking below you in the midst of an earthquake. And I received an email asking for me to send in my latest contact information for updation to their database.

Quirky. So now, I had an itch to find more and Google is my friend:

Convented: not like Sister Enda but more like an Assuntarian
Join duty: first day at work
Tell me: how can I help you?
Pass out: graduate
Redressal: not a red dress rehearsal but a remedy or redress
Hotel: is a restaurant...????
Eggitarian: vegetarian who takes egg and milk
Long cut: erm... opposite of short cut
Paining: this one, i think we all know
On the anvil: something about to happen, on the horizon
Today morning: just like yesterday night
Cent percent: 100%
Centum: one hundred
Full shirt: long sleeves
Half shirt: half sleeves (so means sleeveless is "shirtless"??)

Well, what can I say? And that's just some of it. If you have any more to contribute, please do. I would be chumma chumma (simply) delighted.

creamy chicken pasta...

a very simple recipe to try:

1 tbs of butter
4 boneless, skinless chicken breast pieces
1/2 onion, diced
12 shitake mushrooms
1 cup of heavy (whipping) cream
pasta
salt
Ground black pepper


1. Cook pasta.

2. Melt butter in pan and cook chicken breasts until no longer pink. Remove and slice thinly. Note: very important not to overcook.

3. Saute onions until clear. Add mushrooms. When cooked, stir in cream and cook until thick. Note: for a lighter cream base add low-fat milk in proportion to make up the one cup of cream.

4. Stir in chicken and season. Cook for another 5 minutes.

5. Toss with pasta.

Prep time: 20 mins, serves 4