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P A U 3 A !
Reasons Why The English Language is So Hard to Learn
By: Mara Lutcovich, ESL Instructor (David E. Yoder, PhD, Professor, Speech and Hearing Science, Center for
Literacy and Disability Studies, UNC School of Medicine, Chapel Hill, NC).
To anyone who has tried to teach or has had to
learn English…enjoy!
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 muffinsweren't invented in
England, nor were French fries invented
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 don'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 filing 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.