ENJOY and poder!
In a dull moment, something to perk you up! And Do I speak English ?
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You Think English Is Easy?
http://jodoran.files.wordpress.com/2008/05/crazyenglishlanguage.pdf
Perhaps a retired English teacher was bored when she wrote this. It took a lot of thought to put together!
1) The bandage was wound around the wound.
2) The farm was used to produce produce.
3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
4) We must polish the Polish furniture.
5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.
6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.
8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.
9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
10) I did not object to the object.
11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
13) They were too close to the door to close it.
14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.
15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
18) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.
19) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
20) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?
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 or French fries in France.
· Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat.
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? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth, beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices? 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 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?
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.
English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all. That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.
PS. - Why doesn't 'Buick' rhyme with 'quick'?
You lovers of the English language might enjoy this...
Polysemy, Polyseme, Polysemes, and Polysemous
(Linguistic terms for words with two or more meanings; usually, multiple meanings of a word or words)
Words with Multiple Applications
http://wordinfo.info/unit/3039
Polysemy comes from Neo-Latin polysemia, which comes from Greek polusemous [poly- (many) + sema (sign)] giving us a linguistic term, "having many meanings" or multiple meanings. We also have polyseme (singular) [puh LIS uh mee], and polysemes (plural) [puh LIS uh meez].
The words polysemy [puh LIS uh mee or PAWL i see" mee] and polysemous [puh LIS uh muhs or pawl" ee SEE muhs] are defined as "having or characterized by many meanings; the existence of several meanings for a single word or phrase".
As said earlier, these terms refer to "words" or other "items of language with two or more senses"; for example, "walk" as in "The child started to walk" and "They live at 500 High Walk". Such senses may be more or less distant from one another: walk, "action", walk, "street" are relatively close, but crane, "bird" and crane, "machine" are much further apart.
It is generally agreed that in each case only one word is being discussed, not two that happen to have the same form; to which the name homonym is given.
Senses of the same word are seldom ambiguous in context, but the less specific the context, the greater the possibility of ambiguity; for example, if someone who is looking at a picture says "What big cranes!", it may not be immediately clear to anyone who can not see the picture whether the comment refers to birds or machines.
Polysemy and homonymy
There is an extensive doubtful area between the concepts of polysemy and homonymy. A word like "walk" is polysemous (went walking, went for a walk, walk the dog, Hill Walk Drive), while a word like "bank" is homonymous between at least "bank" for money and the "bank" of a river.
The coexistence of several meanings in one word, which is extremely common, as stated earlier, is called polysemy. Some words develop a whole family of meanings, each new meaning often forming yet another starting point for more definitions.
If in a good dictionary you were to look up such words as "natural, good, loose, free", and "real"; you would be surprised at the number of meanings listed.
Being able to distinguish between polysemy words and homonym words is not easy
Dictionaries treat cases of multiple meanings either as polysemy or as homonymy, but in fact it is not always easy to decide which one we are dealing with, and dictionaries sometimes differ in their decisions.
Are "table" (furniture) and "table" (arrangement of data) two different words, or the same word with two meanings? Dictionaries usually go for the latter solution, on the grounds of a shared etymology.
On the other hand, "a pupil" (in school) and the "pupil" (of the eye) are usually listed as different words; although in fact they have the same historical origin.
Would you identify the following variations in the meanings of "up" as polysemy or homonymy?
There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meanings than any other English two-letter word, and it is "up".
It's easy to understand up, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake up?
At a meeting, why does a topic come up? Why do we speak up and why are the officers up for election and why is it up to the secretary to write up a report?
We call up our friends and we use it to brighten up a room, polish up the silver, and we warm up the leftovers and clean up the kitchen. We lock up the house and some guys fix up the old car.
At other times the little word has real special meaning. People stir up trouble, line up for tickets, work up an appetite, and think up excuses.
To be dressed is one thing but to be dressed up is extra special. Another use of up is confusing as a drain must be opened up because it is stopped up.
We open up a store in the morning but we close it up at night. Do you have the impression that we seem to be pretty mixed up about up?
To be knowledgeable of the proper uses of up, look up the word in the dictionary. In a desk size dictionary, the word up, takes up almost 1/4th the page and definitions add up to about thirty.
If you are up to it, you might try building up a list of the many ways up is used. It will take up a lot of your time, but if you don't give up, you may wind up with a hundred or more.
When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding up. When the sun comes out we say it is clearing up. When it rains, it wets up the earth.
When it doesn't rain for awhile, things dry up; as a result, they can even heat up.
According to some British speakers and writers, things can even "hot up".
We could go on and on, but I'll wrap it up, because now my time is up; so, I'll shut up.
(An example of "hot up" was seen at the UK website blog, Digital Home, in an article titled, "Browser wars hot up with Safari for Windows" by Dean Evans, dated Monday, June 11, 2007).
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