Monday, August 06, 2012

Just for laughs - Phunny English Poem


 
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 funny (or should it be phunny) 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?   
And if people from Poland are called Poles
Then people from Holland should be Holes
And the Germans, Germs.   

And let's not forget the Americans, who changed s to z, but that's another story.


- A language-confused netizen

13 comments:

Unknown said...

BRILLIANT!!

Haha, amazingly put! Very impressed, and look forward to more posts. :)

Rama Ananth said...

Yes, English language has always been confusing and is still confusing to me, it is all Greek & Latin to me.
Nice blog makes one think,and get confused again and again.

Destiny's child... said...

That's just brilliant, you have spoken my mind and how! RGB, this one is one of your best..no, bestest, if it can be fastest, smartest, prettiest and cutest, why not bestest, right? ;)

Destiny's child... said...

Did my comment disappear?

Bikram said...

:) he he he nice one RGB that brought a smile .. I had recently put some posts on how funny english is ..

good to see a post from you

Bikram's

RGB said...

Would rather credit this to the inventors of the language. I am but a mirror, merely reflecting the nuances of the language...(Takes a bow, falls to the ground and laughs her block off!)

Ashwin Wilson said...

Can we nominate this for a Nobel Prize in Literature, please?!

And it’s about time Blogger comes up with the ‘like’ button!

Insignia said...

Hahaha truly entertaining. Got reminded of all my English posts, yours beats everything :)

Balachandran V said...

Enjoyed it thoroughly - or is it taroly? :-)

RGB said...

Takes a bow, no not to shoot an arrow, but to say thank you to all you wonderful people for your generous comments:P. I'm indeed flattered!

Ellen said...

Oh yes,I got a good laugh with this one. Saw something like this on the internet not so long ago. You did well. 'Twas fun. Blessings to you and your family.

The Holy Lama said...

RGB at her best. The fun in English is what we like about it...

SG said...

Excellent. Here is a joke. Two guys met in the university for the first time. One guy asked: Where are you from? The other guy replied: I come from a place where we do not end a sentence with a preposition. The first guy realized he made a grammatical error. So he said: I am sorry. Let me rephrase the question. Where are you from, idiot?