We’ll begin with a box, and the plural is boxes,
But the plural of ox becomes oxen, not oxes.
One fowl is a goose, but two are called geese,
Yet the plural of moose should never be meese.
You may find a lone mouse or a nest full of mice,
Yet the plural of house is houses, not hice.

Then one may be that, and there would be those,
Yet hat in the plural would never be hose,
And the plural of cat is cats, not cose.
We speak of a brother and also of brethren,
But though we say mother, we never say methren.
Then the masculine pronouns are he, his and him,
But imagine the feminine: she, shis and shim!

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 muffins weren’t invented in England.

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?

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?

We ship by truck but send cargo by ship…
We have noses that run and feet that smell.
We park in a driveway and drive in a parkway.
And 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.

If Father is Pop, how come Mother’s not Mop???

Das hier können eigentlich nur Männer gemacht haben:

Und das hier ist eigentlich wirklich wahr:

Aber hier das ist wohl von Blondinen angerichtet worden:

Antworten:
1) eine Zigarette

Have you heard the one about the man who went to trial for having pulled a woman down a street by the hair? When the judge asked the arresting officer, „Was she drugged?“ the policeman answered, „Yes sir, a full block.“ Or the one about the woman who asked a Boston cab driver where she could get scrod. „I didn’t know that the verb had that past tense,“ muttered the cabbie.

Both jokes rely on the fact that verb tenses in English are crazy, fraught with a fearful asymmetry and puzzling unpredictability. Some verbs form their past tense by adding -d, -ed, or -t—walk, walked; bend, bent. Others go back in time through an internal vowel change—begin, began; sing, sang.

Another cluster adds -d or -t and undergoes an internal vowel change—lose, lost; buy, bought. And still others don’t change at all—set, set; put, put. No wonder, then, that our eyes glaze and our breath quickens when we have to form the past tense of verbs like dive, weave, shine, sneak, and baby-sit.

The past tenses of verbs in our language cause so many of us to become tense that I’ve written a poem about the insanity:

The verbs in English are a fright.
How can we learn to read and write?
Today we speak, but first we spoke;
Some faucets leak, but never loke.
Today we write, but first we wrote;
We bite our tongues, but never bote.
Each day I teach, for years I taught,
And preachers preach, but never praught.
This tale I tell; this tale I told;
I smell the flowers, but never smold.
If knights still slay, as once they slew,
Then do we play, as once we plew?
If I still do as once I did,
Then do cows moo, as they once mid?
I love to win, and games I’ve won;
I seldom sin, and never son.
I hate to lose, and games I lost;
I didn’t choose, and never chost.

I love to sing, and songs I sang;
I fling a ball, but never flang.
I strike that ball, that ball I struck;
This poem I like, but never luck.
I take a break, a break I took;
I bake a cake, but never book.
I eat that cake, that cake I ate;
I beat an egg, but never bate.
I often swim, as I once swam;
I skim some milk, but never skam.
I fly a kite that I once flew;
I tie a knot, but never tew.
I see the truth, the truth I saw;
I flee from falsehood, never flaw.
I stand for truth, as I once stood;
I land a fish, but never lood.
About these verbs I sit and think.
These verbs don’t fit. They seem to wink
At me, who sat for years and thought
Of verbs that never fat or wrought.

Ein Mann kauft sich einen Lügendetektor, der einen schlägt, wenn man lügt, und probiert ihn gleich beim Abendessen aus.
Vater: Na, Sohnemann? Wo warst du heute während der Schulzeit?
Sohn: Im Unterricht.
Roboter schlägt Sohn.
Sohn: Okay, ich war im Kino und hab mir Filme angeschaut.
Vater: Welchen Film hast du geschaut?
Sohn: Toy Story.
Roboter schlägt Sohn.
Sohn: Okay, es war ein Porno-Film.
Vater: WAS? Als ich in deinem Alter war, wusste ich nicht mal, was ein Porno ist!
Roboter schlägt Vater.
Mutter: HAHA – dein Sohn!
Roboter schlägt Mutter.

This two-letter word in English has more meanings
than any other two-letter word, and that word is
‘UP.’
It is listed in the dictionary as an [adv], [prep], [adj], [n] or [v].

It’s easy to understand UP, meaning toward the sky
or at the top of the list,
but when we awaken in the morning,
why do we wake UP?

At a meeting, why does a topic come UP?
Why do we speak UP,
and why are the officers UP for election
and why is it UP to the secretary
to write UP a report?

We call UP our friends,
brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver
warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen.
We lock UP the house and
fix UP the old car.

At other times this little word has real special meaning.
People stir UP trouble,
line UP for tickets,
work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses.

To be dressed is one thing
but to be dressed UP
is special.

And this UP is confusing:
A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP.

We open UP a store in the morning
but we close it UP at night.
We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP!

To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP,
look UP the word UP in the dictionary.
In a desk-sized dictionary,
it takes UP almost 1/4 of the page
and can add UP to about thirty definitions

If you are UP to it,
you might try building UP a list
of the many ways UP is used.
It will take UP a lot of your time,
but if you don’t give UP,
you may wind UP with a hundred or more.

When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP.
When the sun comes out we say it is clearing UP.
When it rains, it soaks UP the earth.
When it does not rain for awhile, things dry UP.
One could go on & on, but I’ll wrap it UP, for now ……..
my time is UP!

Oh….one more thing:
What is the first thing you do in the morning
& the last thing you do at night?

U __
__P !

Did that one crack you UP?

Don’t screw UP.
Send this on to everyone you look UP in your address book…
or not…it’s UP to you.

Now
I’ll shut UP