Thursday, October 16, 2008

An Exception To Every Rule



Over the years I've collected words that show how difficult the English language is. Here's a sample.

through, cough, dough, plough, rough
cove, move, love
nose, dose, lose
flour, tour, your
brood, flood, good
beat, threat, great
batch, watch
bomb, comb, womb
ponder, wonder
now, low
stork, work
sand, wand
cone, done
drought, fought
brown, grown
few, sew
fraught, draught
bead, dead
number, dumber
tower, mower
con, ton
book, spook
fury, bury

I would love for someone to explain the rules of pronunciation to me. While it's great that immigrants learn our language, we certainly don't make it easy for them. Hence, the reason the children pick it up faster than the adults. They're immersed in it. They grow up with it. Yet whenever immigration is an issue--a manufactured hot button topic--the language difference is always brought up. Immigrants should be required to speak our lawless English which should also be our official language.



Well, hey, like the man says...

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

If English becomes the official language, will Sarah Palin have to speak in clear, complete, grammatically correct sentences that make sense?
--barb

Hank Greer said...

She may learn to speak in clear, complete, grammatically correct sentences, but I doubt she'll ever make sense. :-)

John Speare said...

oh my god, that picture rules. 1000 words indeed -- and all of them likely misspelled