Have just received an email from a German friend. He wrote “You probably have received this several times from other parties – but  just in case you haven't ... Something to get your teeth into over the holiday, I thought.” Would like to share it with people interested in the language.

 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.