The English Plural 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, Why
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 there 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.???