The English language is the most pieced together language on Earth. It has the most words, the most idiotic pronunciations, and the weirdest rules. Just imagining attempting to learn English as a foreign language gives me the shivers.

I’ve collected some poems about English that exemplify reasons for my annoyance. They give a chuckle, and also make you realize how stupid some things are:

I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough.
Others may stumble but not you,
On hiccough, through, lough and through.
Well done!
And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps.

Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird,
And dead–it’s said like bed, not bead.
For goodness’s sake, don’t call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat:
They rhyme with suite and straight and debt.

A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, broth in brother,
And here is not a match for there,
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear,
And then there’s dose and rose and lose–
Just look them up–and goose and choose,
And cork and work and card and ward,
And font and front and word and sword,
And do and go and thwart and cart.
Come, come, I’ve hardly made a start.

A dreadful language? Man alive,
I’d mastered it when I was five.

-T.S. Watt (1954)

On my pet peeve, “-ough:”

As a farmer was going to plough,
He met a man driving a cough;
They had words which led to a rough,
And the farmer was struck on his brough.

One day when the weather was rough,
An old lady went for some snough,
Which she thoughtlessly placed in her mough,
And it got scattered, all over her cough.

While a baker was kneading his dough,
A weight fell down on his tough,
When he suddenly exclaimed ough!
Because it had hurt him sough.

There was a hole in the hedge to get through,
It was made by no one knew whough;
In getting through a boy lost his shough,
And was quite at a loss what to dough.

A poor old man had a bad cough,
To a doctor he straight went ough,
The doctor did nothing but scough,
And said it was all fancy, his cough.

-Anonymous

And here is something clever to think about:

If GH stands for P as in Hiccough
If OUGH stands for O as in Dough
If PHTH stands for T as in Phthisis
If EIGH stands for A as in Neighbour
If TTE stands for T as in Gazette
If EAU stands for O as in Plateau
The right way to spell POTATO should be GHOUGHPHTHEIGHTTEEAU!

English. It’s a love/hate thing.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 4th, 2008 at 8:44 pm and is filed under All About Me. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.