Mengapa Bahasa Inggris Susah (part 2)

Sumber: http://www.i18nguy.com/english-is-tough.html

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 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?
• That you comb through annals of history but not a single annal?
• 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?
• How can overlook and oversee be opposites,
• while quite a lot and quite a few are alike?
• How can the weather be hot as hell one day and cold as hell another?

Have you noticed that we talk about certain things only when they are absent?

• Have you ever seen a horsefull carriage or a strapfull gown?
• Met a sung hero or experienced requited love?
• Have you ever run into someone who was combobulated, gruntled, ruly or peccable?
• And where are all those people who are spring chickens or who would actually hurt a fly?
• 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, isn't a race at all).

• That's why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.
• And why, when I wind up my watch, I start it, but when I wind up this essay, I end it!