The English language sucks! I hate it! I hate it so much!
Consider the word vacuum: Why isn’t it vacyoom with a “y” and an “oom” as in broom?
It’s stupid!
After mouthing the “oo” and then the “uu”, I think I’ve figured it out: the mouth makes more of a “sucking” shape with the “uu”. Makes sense when you’re talking about vacuum cleaners.
Then there’s the matter of to whom you are speaking, another “oo” that shouldn’t be because “ho” makes that Santa sound. But then whom can’t be home because there’s no “e” on the end of it.
See? English sucks!
English should make sense, don’t you think? Yeah, yeah, and yet, there are so many subtleties, so many variations, so many … uh … absurdities.
It’s learning its subtleties (it’s and its) that will soon have you banging your head on your dictionary.
The English language has its own sucky, warped humour (phonetic or funny, depending how you look at it). Who on earth thought up “ph”? I was raised in Bengough, Saskatchewan. It took years to learn why “ph” sounded like “ff”. Who am I kidding? I confess, I still don’t know.
“Sound it out,” my teacher used to tell me. Well, sound out this: “Lieutenant Colonel.” We Canadians pronounce the first word with an “f” and we all pronounce the second with an “r” in the middle.
Show me something, anything, that explains why this is. You can’t.
And ohhh, the rules …
“I” before “e”, except after “c” or when said as “ay” as in “neighbour” or “weigh”, or when spelling a name, like “Reid”, or when spelling plurals of words that end in “cy” as in “fallacies” … or the word “foreign” or “science” or “seize” or “neither” or “heifer” or “caffeine” or “leisure” or, quite fittingly, “weird”.
The rules are always changing. If we changed traffic rules as often, we’d wind up in a coffin. Prepositions weren’t proper to end a sentence with. Now they are. “Because” and “and” never began a sentence. And now they do.
But rules are meant to be broken; why, that’s why they’re called rules. It’s just knowing when and how, things like knowing when a noun is a verb and why or why not.
And it’s not for lack of trying, or even crying, for crying out loud!
Then there’s the homonyms …
Homonyms aren’t afraid of anything, even when the steaks are high (Ooeee, what’s that I smell! More barbecue sauce, please).
It’s plane to sea theirs knot much two learn hear. It’s awl phonetic, of coarse, just use your common scents.
“Idiosyncrazies”, as I like to call them, abound, driving us crazy. They sound the same, may even look the same, but they aren’t. The object of the game, if you don’t object, is to tell which goes where and when, I expect.
To subject you to this subject seems almost criminal. It’s no wonder we desert when what we want is dessert (à la mode, s’il vous plait).
English was invented by the Anglo-Saxon peoples of Northern Europe and the British Isles and they are all dead now. I am soooo, glad!
OK, do ewe get the point? I’m almost threw. Does the English language bug you, two?
There’s almost no reason or rhyme to it, or so it seems. And, what choice do we have? We must press on. The press must go on.
We’ll fight the good fight; to the left, to the right …
Oh my, I think I’ve said more than enough. Time to suck it up, or at least try.
