Funny

English is a Funny Language


Let's face it – English is a funny 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 blouse, 2 blice?

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? If you wrote a letter, perhaps you bote your tongue?

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? Park on driveways and drive on parkways?

How can a »slim chance« and a »fat chance« be the same, while a »wise man« and »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 horseful carriage or a strapful 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 clock 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 is 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?

Now I know why I flunked my English. It's not my fault, the silly language doesn't quite know whether it's coming or going.

You know.........
»Funny« is to find a text in the blaster that really pleases you. And you think »what a nice person must have written this«.
Some time later, you just went to bed...
All the things that »happened« to you during the day pop up in front of your mind's eye.
And you remember this text. And then some unclear idea sneaks up on you.
These ideas expressed in the text were a little too familiar. And you recognize that YOU yourself are this nice guy. You were the author of this entry. You just used another nick-name, you had forgotten about...
That is really funny......

Philip Castle, in Kurt Vonnegut´s »Cat´s Cradle« (1963), is remembering how, during a terrible plague, he and his father walked among bodies piled high inside and outside of a jungle hospital:

It was all we could do to find a live patient to treat. In bed after bed we found dead people.
»And Father started giggling,« Castle continued.
»He couldn´t stop. He walked out into the night with his flashlight. He was still giggling. He was making the flashlight beam dance over all the dead people stacked outside. He put his hand on my head, and do you know what that marvelous man said to me?« asked Castle.
»Nope.«
»`Son,´ my father said to me, `someday this will all be yours.´«

I am worried about the current meanings of the word »funny«. It now means ominous, as when one speaks of a funny sound in the motor; disturbing, as when one says that a friend is acting funny; and frightening, as when a wife tells the police that it is funny, but her husband hasn´t been home for two days and nights.

Some people find 'funny' so hard to define.

For me it is easy.

Funny makes me laugh.

It is funny to read a text in the blaster thinking: »o, what a nice person must have written this.« Someone who has the same sense of humour than oneself, who likes the same films and has experienced similar things as you yourself. Lying in bed in the evening, you think about this incidence. and from one second to the other you know it: this text had been written by yourself. Quite a long time ago and under another nickname...
Funny I thought and fell asleep....

Nothing is INTRINSICALLY funny, to be sure, but to me nothing is so consistently, profoundly, earth-shakingly funny as we animals in the act of mating. Reader, if you are young and would live on love; if in the flights of intercourse you feel that you and your beloved are fit models for a Phidias, for a Michelangelo – then don´t, I implore you, be so foolish as to include among the trappings of your love-nest a good plate mirror. For a mirror can reflect only what it sees, and what it sees is screamingly funny.