[lfjokes] English

[Simondo]

   Some reasons why the English language is so hard to learn:
  
   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. After a number of injections my jaw got number.
   19. Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.
   20. I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
   21. 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, and French fries can't be
   found 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.
  
   Why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce
   and hammerers don't ham?
  
   If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth, beeth?
   One goose, two 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 praguht?
   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 other languages 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.
  
   P.S. Why doesn't "Buick" rhyme with "quick"?