A little note on why English is not crazy. Or; screw you, Lederer.

For quite some time now, this little slanderous article has been floating around the web making it look as though the English language does not make sense.

As both a student and teacher of the English language, I will be the first to admit that, on the surface, English is a bit fucking stupid - especially the spelling and pronunciation parts. But this article is just plain lazy.

English has a varied and rich history. From Anglo-Saxon roots, to French domination, English has developed into a global language, and it continues to evolve. Everyday new words are formed – some survive, some don’t.

So when I see something like this, or hear someone say something stupid like ‘if the plural of “box” is boxes, then why is the plural of “ox” oxen?’ then I tend to get on my high horse and preach about how English is a language that comes from many different sources, and this affects the form of words and the grammar that they use.

But whoever wrote this garbage (and I’m assuming it was an American because of the words used) obviously didn’t do their homework.

So I have taken the liberty of explaining why this article is bollocks. It goes in the same order as the article.

Here we go…

First of all, ‘eggplants’ are called eggplants because in the 18^th century there was (and there still is) a variety of the plant that was white – like an egg. It also looked a bit like an egg – like an egg. Look:

No ham in ‘hamburger’? That’s because they are not named after the meat, but rather where they originate from. They started life being called hamburg steak after the city of Hamburg. Hamburg was a major port for immigrants leaving for the States. They settled and introduced the hamburg steak which eventually became the hamburger.

The first recorded use of this ‘pineapple’ is in the 1300s when it referred to what we know now as the pine cone.  However, the word apple in the Middle English period was used to refer to all fruits, including nuts! (Appel of paradis was actually a banana.) Discovered by European travelers in the 1600s, the pineapple was named after its resemblance of the pine cone. I don’t quite see it myself.

For some reason, the United States like to label their muffins as English and American. ‘English muffin’s are savoury whilst the American ones are sweet. English muffins originated in England (duh) during the Victorian period, being made from leftover bread dough. Immigrants took them to the States where they got the name English Muffins. But only by Americans. Do you know what we call them in England? Muffins.

‘Quicksand’ is an easy one. It is a compound word of ‘quick’ and ‘sand’. The original form of the word ‘quick’ is quyk which means ‘living’. So ‘quicksand’, therefore, has nothing to do with speed. The sand is ‘alive’.

‘Boxing rings’ were originally round. Fighters would be surrounded by a ‘ring’ of people who wanted to see a fine pair of pugilists smack seven shades of shit out of each other. The spectators would hold a rope to contain the action. However, some of the audience would interfere with the fight so it became necessary to create a more suitable place for action. It was decided that four posts would be stuck in the ground with ropes attached. The ones we have now are a bit trendier, but it is still essentially the same thing. The name ‘ring’ just stuck.

‘Guinea pigs’ are from South America and they actually taste pretty good. In the 1600s trade between Guinea, England, South America was booming, and guinea pigs were brought back to England and Guinea.  As for the pig bit, listen to one. If you squeeze it hard enough it sounds a bit like a small pig. And if you really squeeze it hard, it whistles Ring of Fire. Go on, try it.

Writers, fingers, grocers, hammers.  The /-er/ suffix in English is used to form nouns to distinguish what a person’s job is or where they come from. Writers write: the verb ‘write’ becomes the noun ‘writer’. So, fingers don’t ‘fing’ because ‘fing’ isn’t a verb. Or a sodding word, for that matter. Grocers don’t groce, again because ‘groce’ isn’t a word. Gross, however, is, and it is from this that we get grocers – a person who buys and sells by gross. Again, ham isn’t a verb, so a hammer can’t ham (unless it is an exceedingly bad actor).

‘Amend’ and ‘amends’ are two completely different words. Amend is a verb and amends is a noun.  You can’t ‘make’ a verb.  They do, however, have the same French root amender, which means ‘to correct, free from fault’.

‘Teachers’ and ‘preachers’. This is a tough one. Basically, ‘teach’ is an Old English word whilst ‘preach’ is Latin. ‘Teach’ was originally tæcan and the past tense of tæcan is tæhte, which is pronounced a bit like ‘taught’. ‘Preach’, on the other hand, is from the Latin praedicare.  Now, one Latin conjugation (and there are fricking loads of them) is an /-it/ ending to make the past tense.  Because ‘preach’ is a Latin word it follows that it ends with /-ed/. ‘Teach’ is an Old English weak verb class 1 (actually, in a sub-division of class 1).  Most Old English verbs had an infinitive that ended with /-an/ (eg: swebban ‘to put to sleep’), this ending is removed when the verb is conjugated.  When the /-an/ is removed from tæcan we have tæc. To form the past tense, we would add /-t/ or /-d/. But, because the stem tæc ends with a /c/, it means that pronunciation would be weird.  Because of this, tæcan drops the /c/ so that it can use the /t/ ending. The final /e/ is because of the pronunciation.  There are a number of verbs that do this: cweccan changes to cweahte, dreccan changes to dreahte.  ‘Teach’ seems to have stuck around.

The suffix –arian means a believer or an advocate of something. So a ‘humanitarian’ is “one who advocates or practices human action to solve social problems” (OED).  A ‘vegetarian’ then is someone who advocates the eating of vegetables. This is more of a semantic (and, I guess, moral) thing: people shouldn’t eat humans. They taste funny.

The word ‘recite’ comes from the Latin recitare which means ‘read aloud, read out’.  Since plays are written in words, and words are spoken – often aloud – then of course a play is going to be recited.  ‘Play’ comes from Old English and means ‘occupy oneself’ (fnarr-fnarr), one way of doing this is to play music. The clincher is ‘recital’, which actually comes from a 16^th century legal term (therefore Latin), and means ‘rehearsal’. So yes, we recite (read aloud) a play, and play (occupy ourselves) at a recital (rehearsal).

‘To ship’ originally meant exactly that – we would send something by ship. In the 19^th century it began to be used for all methods of conveyance, primarily in American English.  The next bit, ‘send cargo by ship’ just shows how dumb the writer of this is. We also send cargo by plane. ‘Cargo’, incidentally, comes from the Spanish cargo which means ‘burden’.

Why does your nose run? ‘Run’ comes from the Old English rinnan which means ‘to flow’.  When you have a cold, your nose produces more mucus to fight the infection. More mucus means more liquid means more flowing. Feet only smell if you haven’t had a bath! The smell you smell is the odour coming from your feet, not your actual feet. Ergo, your feet don’t smell. And many other parts of the body can smell too!

Right, parking! ‘Park’ (as a verb) is actually a fairly new word from the 19^th century. It comes from the military and it means ‘to arrange military vehicles in an enclosure’. The place where they were enclosed? Yep, that’s called a park. A simple case of a noun turning into a verb. Gradually, the term park became used for civilian vehicles too. The OED has the definition of ‘driveway’ as ‘a short private road that leads from a public road to a house’. ‘ROAD’!!!! For fuck’s sake!!! What do we do on a road? We drive! That’s why it’s called a DRIVEway.

However, parkway is a bit more taxing. Firstly, it’s another example of American English and it dates from the 1930s. In the 1930s, the US government decided to build a road going through Shenandoah National Park in Virginia. This goes all the way through the park giving scenic views (so I’m told). A typical parkway is a road that is lined with trees and other pretty things. Like hookers. Often, they go straight through or at least lead to …. a park. Hence, a parkway. And why do we ‘drive on a parkway’? Because it is a ROAD!

This guy is annoying me now.

‘Slim chance’ and ‘fat chance’ is pragmatic. The original meaning of ‘slim’ was actually ‘bad,sly,clever’, but that does not really have anything to do with chance.  However, it’s all about the amount of luck you will have.  ‘Fat chance’ means that the likelihood of something happening is next to zero. Here is an example:

        “Hello Matthew. Would you mind babysitting this evening? Little Gewürztraminer hasn’t been well and she has some form of diarrhea. You will need to change her nappies every 20 minutes”, said .  “Fat chance”, said Matthew.

So yes, ‘fat chance’ means little to no chance of something happening. ‘Slim chance’, on the other hand, means that there is slightly higher chance that something will happen. Like winning the lottery, or bedding Emma Watson. A small chance perhaps, but still higher than ‘fat chance’.

The next one depends on your understanding of the word ‘wise’. It comes from Old English wis and it means ‘learned’. ‘Wise man’ was actually a phrase in Old English too. So a ‘wise man’ is a man who is sagacious.  ‘Wise guy’, however, carries a different meaning of ‘wise’. This meaning dates from 19^th century American slang and it means ‘cunning’.  A ‘wise guy’, a gangster, is therefore a sly, sneaky person.

‘Burn up’ means to catch on fire. ‘Burn down’ means to be completely consumed by fire and destroyed. ‘Burn up’ is at the start of a fire and ‘burn down’ is at the end. Easy.

‘Fill in’ and ‘fill out’ are almost synonymous, but there is a slight difference.  When you ‘fill in’ a form, you are concentrating on one section of the form – fill in your date of birth, for example.  ‘Fill out’ on the other hand is talking about the whole form.  You can fill out a questionnaire by filling in the blanks. Basically, ‘filling in’ is giving the information, and ‘filling out’ is completing something.

‘Go off’ is used specifically for loud noises. An alarm, a siren, and a gun can all ‘go off’.  ‘Go on’ means to take place or happen.  So with an alarm, it ‘goes on’ by starting at the set time.  But it ‘goes off’ because it awakens you from your perfect slumber by screaming at you.

Last one…

Both chiefly American English, ‘Pop’ is a shortened version of papa, which is French. Its first recorded use was in 1838.   ‘Mom’, on the other hand, is a shortened version of mamma, which is Latin. This is a common theme through Indo-European languages – mamme in Greek, mama in Persian, and muhme in German. It dates from the 1570s. Now the interesting stuff… Middle English has the word mome which actually means ‘an aunt’, and some theorists believe that the word comes from the mimicking of the mouth during the suckling period. Cool, huh?

Right, there we are. I hope people find this interesting, if not useful. English is a fascinating language, but it certainly isn’t crazy.  I honestly think it is bad form to put something like this up on the internet because it may dissuade people from learning the language.

Richard Lederer, whoever and wherever you are…. Burn, motherfucker!