Inglorious English

Most languages around the world have some elements of irregularity — words and phrases that don’t follow the rules. But linguists say that English is the most irregular of all.

The sentences below are nice examples of one particular irregularity in English: words that are spelled the same, but pronounced differently and have different meanings. They make it much easier for native English speakers to see what the fuss is about. Read them out loud for the full effect…

The bandage was wound around the wound.

The farm was used to produce produce.

The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.

We must polish the Polish furniture.

He could lead if he would get the lead out.

The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.

Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.

A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.

When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.

I did not object to the object.

The insurance was invalid for the invalid.

There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.

They were too close to the door to close it.

The buck does funny things when the does are present.

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

To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.

The wind was too strong to wind the sail.

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

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

How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

Then there’s the English idiom. All languages have idioms, but linguists say that English idioms are the craziest of them all…

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.

And why doesn’t “Buick” rhyme with “quick"?

Godless

I just finished reading “Godless: the Church of Liberalism” (by Anne Coulter), and it was both surprising and what I expected.

The expected part was Ms. Coulter’s trademark rapier wit, which will have anybody who’s not clinicly disturbed both wincing and laughing. Her barbs are mainly (but not entirely!) directed at liberals, so those who are not of the liberal persuasion will doubtless find it much more entertaining. As always, I’m in awe of Ms. Coulter’s ability to sneak a zinger into the most unlikely places. One example: in this book’s discussion of radio-carbon dating, she calls it an excellent tool for determining Helen Thomas' actual date of birth. Oooh, ouch! But I laughed out loud at that one…

The surprising part was the last few chapters of the book, which are all about Ms. Coulter’s skeptical views of Darwinist evolution. Knowing that she is a devout Christian, I expected those chapters to be ideological, faith-based rants — and therefore of little interest to me. In fact, those chapters are anything but that sort of rant. They raise interesting questions about the validity of evolution that I don’t have the expertise to answer — I’ve always just accepted evolutionary theory as the consensus view of science, and presumed that it was backed with the same rigor as (say) our understanding of chemistry or physics. Ms. Coulter makes the case that in fact evolution is not backed up by the evidence.

A point she makes repeatedly is that if it’s true (as evolutionary theory asserts) that new species evovled gradually, then the fossil record should have many examples of those intermediate forms — and those fossils have not been found. For example, if it’s true that early squirrels evolved into bats (as evolutionary biologists currently believe), then where are those half-squirrel/half-bat fossils? I can’t poke any holes in this point — every possible explanation I can think of for the absence of intermediate fossils seems unreasonable, and without any evidence I’m aware of.

Ms. Coulter also uses the squirrel/bat example to make another point: the unlikeliness of many presumed evolutionary paths. In this case, evolutionary biologists posit that the short wrist and finger bones of the early squirrels gradually elongated into the wing bones of bats. She asks a good question: how on earth could having these longer and longer bones ever have done those posited (but never seen in fossils) squirrels any good? And evolutionary theory says that they must have been beneficial mutations, else they would not have survived and prospered…and eventually become bats. Interesting question, and I know of no plausible answer.

Even with my limited knowledge of evolution, I caught Ms. Coulter on one error: she criticizes science for not having observed any speciation since they started looking about 150 years ago. The fallacy there is a question of time: 150 years is a tiny, tiny fraction of 2 billion or so years that life has been evolving on Earth (assuming evolution is correct). It shouldn’t be surprising that we haven’t witnessed speciation in such a small time period.

It’s an interesting and entertaining book, and I’ll recommend it — especially to anyone who enjoys the unrestrained display of a first-class wit…