aghast with nits

[Delwin D Fandrich]

----- Original Message -----
From: "antares" <antares@EURONET.NL>
To: <pianotech@ptg.org>
Sent: June 10, 2001 9:29 AM
Subject: aghast with nits


>  If there's ever, anybody 'out there' who has the slightest or even
tiniest
> respect for 'the fact' that >  I.....ME < ...write and communicate in YOUR
> silly language (;>))))  ,then pay 'hommage' to Susan Kline in Philomath
OR.
> I owe it to her!

Now just what do you mean by 'silly language? English is a perfectly logical
and straightforward language. Well, except for a few minor points.

Ok, so there are no eggs in an eggplant or ham in hamburger. Who cares?
There are also no apples in pineapples and neither grows on pine trees. So
what if the English didn't send us English muffins, or the French french
fries? We do have sweetmeats that are candies and sweetbreads that are
actually meat and not sweet at all.

But at least our descriptive terms are accurate except that quicksand works
slowly and boxing rings are really square.

Our geography is pretty good though. Except, of course, that guinea pigs are
neither pigs nor are they from Guinea.

We have writers that write and fingers that don't fing, grocers that don't
groce and hammers that don't ham.

One tooth is a tooth, but two of them are teeth. So if I build another
booth, do I have beeth? If another goose gives me geese will another moose
give me meese?

Why can you make amends but not just one amend? And, as much as I search
though the annals of history I can't find a single annal. If you get rid of
all your odds and ends except just the one, what do you have? An odd or an
end?

When I was in school, the teachers taught. So, when I was in church, why
didn't the preacher praught?  If you wrote a letter, can you also bote your
tongue?

In what other language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? We
ship by truck and send our trucks by ship. Our noses run and our feet smell.
We park on driveways and drive on parkways. A fat chance and a slim chance
can mean the same thing but a wise man and a wise guy are opposites. Oversee
and overlook are opposites but quite a lot and quite a few are alike.

The streets are full of horseless carriages, but have you ever seen a
horseful carriage? How about a strapful gown on a beautiful woman? When was
the last time you met a sung hero? Or someone who was combobulated? Or
gruntled. Or ruly? Or peccable? And I've not yet met a spring chicken. But I
did meet a man who would hurt a fly.

Is there any other language in which a house burns up as it burns down? Or
in which you fill in a form as you fill it out? How about that alarm that
goes off as it goes on? Or the stars that I see when they are out, but the
light that I don't see when it is out?

The thing that makes the English language so rich and diverse is that it was
invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the diversity of the
human race (which of course is not a race at all). And now I must go. I see
that my watch has stopped and I must wind it up to start it so I'll have to
wind up this little piece to end it.

Perhaps all English speakers should simply be committed to an asylum for the
verbally insane.

Regards,

Del

(An adaptation of something I saw someplace, but it wasn't on my saw.)