Tony DeyalENGLAND IS a crazy place. An American was invited to go hunting with an English Duke. After about an hour, each having followed a different path, the American rode over to the Duke and said, "I just shot the strangest creature. It had a huge nose, big, fat ears and the widest behind I ever saw".
The Duke said quietly, using the extraordinary ability of the English to fly into a great calm, "Old boy, I think you got the Duchess".
A Jamaican, accustomed to his cold Red Stripe, was asked what he thought about warm English beer. He replied, "I think they should just pour it back into the horse".
The English language is even crazier than its originators. Three foreign doctors on contract in Trinidad were discussing the case of a woman who could not have any children. The first one, from India, said, "The woman is inconceivable". The second one, from the Philippines, corrected her colleague, pointing out, "Inconceivable really means unbelievable or even unimaginable. Really, the woman is impregnable".
"No, no, no, my dear," the third doctor, a Nigerian, admonished. "Impregnable is like a fortress that cannot be conquered or penetrated. The fact is, the woman is unbearable".
One comedian mused, "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 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"?
There are many such ambiguities and inconsistencies in English. One wit pointed out that a renowned national sprinter should be housed in the Hilton Hotel in Trinidad, which is famous for having its first floor at the top and its highest numbered floor at the bottom. He said that like the Hotel, the sprinter has to be upside down because his mouth runs and his feet smell. This can only happen in English.
The appropriateness of some words to the specific situation or context is only part of the problem. There are also many words, called 'homophones', which sound alike. Take 'ewe', 'yew' and 'you.' An English ram, listening to a pop song on the farmer's radio, threw itself from a cliff, a victim of homophonia. The song was, There'll never be another you.
Spelling is an even greater problem and adds to the linguistic lunacy. As Richard Lederer, English teacher or (as he puts it) "unrepentant inmate in the house of correction of composition", rightly says, "The English language is the most widely spoken in the history of our planet. The English language boasts the largest of all vocabularies and one of the most impressive bodies of literature. But let's face it. The English language is a killer to spell correctly".
One student who had worked in Venezuela consistently misspelled the word 'burro' as 'burrow.' His teacher wrote, "My dear sir: It is apparent to me from your spelling that you do not know your ass from a hole in the ground".
This might explain the craziness of English teachers who try to teach the language to people who, like J. Donald Adams, consider it to be "wildly erratic and almost wholly without logic. One needs the eye of a hawk, the ear of a dog, and the memory of an elephant to make headway against its confusions and inconsistencies. In what other language would people recite at a play and play at a recital"?
The only person who is crazier than an English teacher is the teenager who is now on trial in Florida for shooting one. Even though I abhor violence and would never advocate shooting anyone, not even a lawyer, I find it difficult to understand why someone would shoot an English teacher. The teenager, however, claims that it was a mistake, error, blunder, fault, misunderstanding, misconception, misapprehension and even a boo-boo, blooper and boob.
If I had intentions of shooting I might have aimed at my Latin master. In my youth, I only knew the word 'amo' meaning 'I love.' Had I known 'ammo' it would have been different. After all, 'magnum' is a Latin word. Mathematics teachers would also have cause to worry, not just for adding the digits '.357' to magnum to make a lethal weapon. In real life there is no such thing as algebra, and five out of three people have trouble with fractions.
Biology teachers as well. From the time they start with all the anatomical details of 'heart, lungs, liver, spleen' they would be in immediate danger because I hate organ recitals.
Some people, however, can suffer severe provocation from teachers without resorting to terminal solutions. Even though Einstein's teacher said of the young Albert, "It doesn't matter what he does, he will never amount to anything", Einstein was level-headed enough to appreciate that all things are relative. Beethoven did not shoot his music teacher, Johann Georg Albrechtsberger who said of the musical genius, "He has never learned anything, and he can do nothing in decent style". Verdi's school principal, Francesco Basily, rejected the boy's application because, "He is overage and certain to prove mediocre".
Rather than shooting teachers, particularly English teachers, I would recommend that we honour and flatter them. Unfortunately, the one boy who tried buttering up his English teacher was expelled from school. He was a cannibal.
Tony Deyal was last seen saying that old teachers never die, they just lose their class.
