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Blogs by Robert A. Mills
ENGLISH 9/14/2013 6:55:16 AM
As a Croatian Jew whose people originally came from Middle Europe, I have tried for years to make a living from the written word. After six novels and a plethora of short stories, articles and poems, I am now the Grandpa Moses of Literature, and were it not for my old sidekick, Tom Decker, I might give it all up and turn to a life of crime.
English is just too damn hard!
Decker sent me an email recently, which almost did me in.
For example, the bandage was wound around the WOUND, he wrote. The bin so full, itCE PRODUCE. The dump was so was was so full it had to it had to refuse any more REFUSE. The farm would produce an abundance of PRODUCE. We must polish the POLISH furniture.
John could not lead even 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, Tom 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. He did not object to the OBJECT.The insurance was invalid if you were an 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. *See above.A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a SEWER line. To help with planting, he told me the farmer taught his sow to SOW. The wind was too strong for the helmsman to WIND the sail. Upon seeing the tear in the sail, he shed a TEAR.The subject was SUBJECTED to a series of tests. How can I intimate this to my most INTIMATE friend? (Certainly not Decker.)
English is a crazy language. Tom is right. There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins were not invented in England or French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies, while sweetbreads, which are neither sweet nor bread (they were never bred to be BREAD) they are meat, which never were to meant to MEET one another.
We take English for granted, he claims. 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 even a pig.
And why is it that writers write, Decker asks, 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? He wants to know, If you have a bunch of odds and ends, and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it? An odd and end?
If teachers TAUGHT, why don’t preachers PRAUGHT? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? Sometimes, Decker further contends, “I think all the English writers 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? He went on to write, “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.
”People invented English, not computers,” Tom says — “and it reflects the creativity of the human RACE, which, of course, is not a RACE at all. Why is it, when the stars are OUT, they are visible, but when the lights are OUT, they are invisible?
”Why doesnt Buick rhyme with Quick?” he wants to know.
”And we lovers of the language might enjoy this,” he claims.
“There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word — and that word is UP.
”It is 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? he wants to know. We call UP our friends on the telephone.”
We use artwork to brighten UP a room, and we polish UP the silver no matter where it comes from; we warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen. “We lock UP the house, and some guy fixes UP the old car. At other times the little word has a real special meaning: People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses. Like you, Mills!”
To be dressed is one thing, but to be dressed UP is special. 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 the word UP in the dictionary. In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4th 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 wets the earth and often messes things UP. When it doesnt rain for a while, things dry UP.
”One could go on and on, but I'll wrap it UP. My time is UP, anyway, so it is time to shut UP. Now it is UP to you what you do with this column.”
Thanx, Tom, for driving me nuts, all the way UP to the next level, from which I cannot get DOWN! No matter how hard I try!
