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. 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? 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"?

agnoihjoihiao[gjags damn you ardiva! it's not enough it's my second language, now you gotta screw with my head :/

Thanks for the laugh, Ardiva, I needed one. I always wondered why "cleave" means both to stick together, and to separate.

.....and I thought I was having a hard time learning Latin in HS. (Never got past the "Amo, Amat, Amas" thing). lol

Buick dont rhyme 'cause its spoken with an Americen accent!!! ;)

Ahhh...that explains it, jedswindells! ;)

We should all be speaking the same language like Galactica PanaGlobal or Earthean. Take the best of all languages and combine them. Throw out the nonsense and make the structure logical the sounds and spelling non contradictory.

Just for POV.. English is my first and almost only language... And that stuff gets to me as well... LOL

Well the whole buic thing is mainly because QU is considered to be one letter nowadays. 'Kw' Where as B U is two seperate connections 'Byou' or Buh if there's no voul afterwards. Although the english language is confusing, that's nothing compared to french tenses...

here's another one: When he found no Whales in Wales the Whaler gave a wail.

We should all be speaking the same language like Galactica PanaGlobal or Earthean. Take the best of all languages and combine them. Throw out the nonsense and make the structure logical the sounds and spelling non contradictory. ***************************************************** Wasn't this the whole idea behind ESPERANTO?

Yes but that still has yet to catch on. And anybody mentions Ebonics needs to seek a linguist.

No accent marks to guide pronouncing or meaning. It's all context based. If you don't know what's being said, you might not know how to say it. Also English is quite free in borrowing words from any other language, which is probably quicker than coming up with huge compound words that are used in related germanic languages.

Once you get past the context part, it's not that hard. Since in some regards it seems to have less rules about syntax, nor do you have to worry about words being "masculine/feminine/neuter" and stuff like that.

Message edited on: 08/21/2004 14:57

@GOINGRINDER I thought esperanto was that really thick coffee with foam on the top !?!?!

Slightly seriously, English (at least the UK version of it - USA version differs) is difficult because it's a mongrel language. It has influences, words and pronounciations which derive from: Anglo-Saxon, Celtic, Latin (old and new), Germanic, French, Arabic, Chinese (mainly Mandarin, but not exclusively), Australian Aborigine, various Indian languages (including Hindi and Urdu) American Indian, and more (I've lost my definitive list due to disk malfunction. Dammit!) Oh, and Inuit (Eskimo)... I KNOW I've left many out... So English tries to express many different languages which differ phoneticly (or is that phonetically - or fonetikly). Thus we get (approximately) 15 different pronounciations of the syllable "ough", some of which are: cough (coff), though (tho), through (throo), Slough (rhymes with cow), enough (enuff), lough (lock - Irish).. I'm too drunk to remember any more! Dr Samuel Johnson (inventor of the 1st English Language Dictionary) wrote that "ghoti" could be pronounced as "fish". Why? "gh" as in "enough"; "o" as in "women"; "ti" as in "motion".... errmm... I'll say "bye" now (Just recovering from serious disk crash...) Cheers, Diolma

The Americans and English are 2 peoples seperated by a common language
-GB Shaw, often attributed to Churchill here's another..
though the tough cough and hiccough plough him through..;)
Lesse..English is by way of Germanic, Frisian, Angle, Saxon, Norman French, Latin, Danish, Scandanavian, Celtic and Gaelic. What's not to understand?..;) Not to mention our version, with French, Spanish, Yiddish (itself a polyglot language), African, etc..;)

You left out Vulcan and Klingon.

You guys oughta try ARBABIC sometime! Now THERE'S a language that will confuse you. They have about a thousand (literally) different words for camel, depending on gender, age, whether a female is pregnant (for how long she's been pregnant), its color...... etc etc etc. I keep trying to learn it but I always end up blithering.
Worse than that, you can study Yemeni Arabic for several years, go to Egypt, and be totally lost!

Message edited on: 08/22/2004 00:43

Attached Link: http://www.mipmip.dsl.pipex.com/tidbits/pronunciation.shtml

go to Turkey, not many camels floating around..;) btw, that old myth about Eskimos having 50-odd words for snow..is untrue..they have 2 words, one for snow falling, and one for snow on the ground..;)

Answer: because American English is actually comprised of many other languages. So you are not learning just one language. Plus, English (as a whole) is content dependent for it's meaning . Look at the word "scale" in an English dictionary. It has 17 different meanings depending on how it is used. Talk about confusing the folks trying to comprehend this language!

J'entrave que dalle!!!

There's another one in that, MRIguy: 22. I weighed the fish scales on the scales.

while I scaled a moutain to view the scale of the scenery.......