To: My friends across the pond

The amount of consonants in the English language is constant. If not used in one area of the United States, they turn up in another. When a man in Boston "pahks" his "cah," the lost r's migrate southwest, causing a man in Texas to "warsh" his car and invest in "erl wells."






I am posting this for my friends who speak and read more than just the English language. If you can speak three languages you're trilingual. If you can speak two languages you're bilingual. If you can speak only one language you're an American.

If you've learned to speak fluent English, you must be a genius!

This little treatise on the lovely language we share is only for the brave. Peruse at your leisure, English lovers. These are a few of the reasons why the English language is so hard to learn:

1) The purpose of farming is to produce produce.

2) The bandage was wound around the wound.

3) When our dumps get full they refuse more refuse.

4) We polish our Polish furniture.

5) The lead horse was lead from his pen.

6) I was so hot I decided to desert my dessert in the desert.

7) There is no time like the present. It is time to present the present.

8) The boy was playing the bass drum when his friend caught the bass.

9) When my dog got loose the dove dove into the bushes.

10) I did not object to the object.

11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.

12) They were too close to the door to close it.

13) A buck does funny things when the does are present.

14) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.

15) After a number of injections my jaw got number.

16) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.

17) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.

18) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

19) I wrote two letters to my friend too.

20) Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend?

21) It is a strange world of language in which skating on thin ice can get you into hot water. ~Franklin P. Jones

22) At no time is freedom of speech more precious than when a man hits his thumb with a hammer. ~Marshall Lumsden

23) English is a funny language; that explains why we park our car on the driveway and drive our car on the parkway.


There is no egg in eggplant, no ham in hamburger, no apple or pine in pineapple. Quicksand works slowly. Boxing rings are square. A guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

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? There is one goose and two geese but if there is one moose there are not two meese.

If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it? Is it an odd, or an end?

If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? 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 language in which your house can burn up as it burns down and in which you fill in a form by filling it out.

English was invented by people, and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all. You can see when the stars are out. You can’t see when the lights are out.

Why doesn't "Buick" rhyme with "quick"?

BTW, (by the way), my spell checker did not like this particular document. My spell check is aware of the words not the different enunciations of the same words.

For the Netherlands:
Deze hond, is hond, een hond, goede hond, manier hond, aan hond, houd hond, een hond, idiot hond, bezige hond, voor hond, hond 20, seconden hond! ... Lees nu zonder de woordhond.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Hugs and Knuffles

Love, Raggedy (Da Cat)