The following was not written by me. It was sent to me by one of the members of my face-to-face writer’s Group, Monroe County Writers. The author of this is unknown, but whoever wrote it sure packed a lot of info into it that really makes one stop and ponder the English language. Enjoy!

The English Language

THIS IS FOR ALL LANGUAGE LOVERS.

 THIS IS GREAT!!!   

 Read all the way to the end………….. 

This took a lot of work to put together!!!

You think English is easy???  

1) The bandage was wound around the wound.

2) The farm was used to produce produce.  

3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.

4) We must polish the Polish furniture.  

5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.

6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.

7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.  

8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.

9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.

10) I did not object to the object.

11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.

12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.

13) They were too close to the door to close it.  

14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.

15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.

16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.

17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.  

18)   Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.

19) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.  

20) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?  

Let’s face it – English is a crazy 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 index, 2 indices? Doesn’t it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? 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? 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? How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? 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 goes off by going on.  

English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all. That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.  

PS. Why doesn’t ‘Buick’ rhyme with ‘quick’?

You lovers of the English language might enjoy this. There is a two-letter word that has perhaps more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that is ‘UP’.

It’s easy to understand UP meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP? At a meeting, why does a topic come UP? Why do we peak UP and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report?

We call UP our friends. And we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver; we warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen. We lock UP the house and some guys fix UP the old car. At other times the little word has real special meaning. People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses. To be dressed is one thing, but to be dressed UP is special. 

And this UP is confusing: A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP. We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night. We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP!    

To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP,   look the word UP in the dictionary. In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4th of the page and can add UP to about thirty definitions. If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways   UP is used. It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don’t give UP, you may wind UP with a hundred or more. When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP. When the sun comes out we say it is clearing UP.

When it rains, it wets the earth and often messes things UP.  When it doesn’t rain for awhile, things dry UP.  One could go on and on, but I’ll wrap it UP   for now, my time is UP, so… it is time for me to shut UP!  

Oh . . . one more thing:  

What is the first thing you do in the morning & the last thing you do at night?   U-P

Believe it or not, these li’l describers, a.k.a. noun modifiers give many writers fits. But they’re really very easy. An adjective describes a noun, plain and simple. 

Blue ball.

Green lawn.

Grouchy man.

Rusty car.

The first word of each example above describes the noun that follows it, so they’re adjectives.

The snarling black dog hid in the rickety garage.

Now, what are the adjectives? If you picked snarling, black and rickety, you get a gold star. These adjectives are also known as COMMON adjectives. But be careful because sometimes a verb can seem like an adjective and an adjective like a verb. If unsure, ask yourself what the subject of the sentence is doing. Upon first glance, some people might say snarling is a verb, but what’s the dog doing? It’s hiding. Also, you can take away some of the surrounding adjectives and leave the one you’re uncertain about and then ask yourself if it’s describing or if it’s doing. In this case, snarling is describing the dog. Snarling dog.

So, what’s a proper adjective?

A proper adjective is a capitalized word that describes a noun such as the following.

The Indonesian Islands.

The Victorian era furniture.

The Gucci purse and heels.

Now, pick out the common AND proper adjectives in the following sentence.

She put on her Louis Vuitton heels and slipped into a silky, black Vera Wang dress as Jake opened the 1992 Screaming Eagle wine and set it on the redwood table.

If you picked out Louis Vuitton, Vera Wang, and Screaming Eagle as the proper adjectives, and silky, black, 1992 (yes, numbers can be used as an adjective) and redwood as the common adjectives, you get two gold stars.

As I sit here at my desk today, I’ve been listening to the wind howl around the house. We have 40 mph+ winds until sometime tonight. I’m not sure why, but I’ve always felt that when such winds arrive, they not only bring a weather change, but it seems the wind also brings life changes.

This past year, for me personally, has been a wild ride. This morning, I’ve sat here eating an omelet and drinking a cup of black cherry tea, thinking about how January 2009 actually marked the beginning of many changes—and proved just how good natured I am and how that said nature often sets me up for people to hurt me.

And how about Bob’s lyric about a man and the roads he travels? Well, how many times do I have to prove myself before I’m allowed to be who I am? It turns out that I’m still too trusting of people, especially when it comes to business online and Internet friendships. Why is it that when I offer my hand to help, someone inevitably decides he or she wants to control or use me? And why do I continue to help even after I’ve been bitten several times?

I guess the answer is riding on the wind today—now if only I could catch it.

One thing I have learned throughout all of the chaos and upset this year is that God and my family comes first. No matter what is done to me, what hurtful things are said about me, or how I may be hurt by those who suffer jealousy and control issues, all such things do is make me stronger. However, on the flipside of this 2009 chaos I’ve developed some truly beautiful friendships with people of like minds, so I know I’m not alone in this. (You know who you are and I love you all.)

I leave you with a few tips today. Things that you’ll probably feel are no-brainers, but few ever pay attention—and for a long time I was one of them.

Never allow someone to control you, and if people hurt you, use it as a life lesson and grow from it; if you do not, then you’ve allowed it/them to defeat you. Words might hurt, but whether on the phone, the Internet, or a letter…they are only words.

Internet drama is high school bs. Plain and simple. Step away from it, ignore it, and move on. If you allow it to bother you, then the cause of the drama wins.

Never accept someone’s words as truth unless they’ve proven their trust. Always keep an open mind, listen astutely, and observe all.

In this day and age, there are many wolves in sheep’s clothing, and the Internet has fingers that reach throughout the world, so it can be both a blessing and an evil.

And next time the wind roars around your home, office, or the car as you’re commuting, ask yourself this: what change is blowing in the wind and can I learn from it?

I love autumn; it’s my favorite time of year, but those first two or three weeks of cooler temps keep me drained and wanting a nap. That’s especially hard to cope with on days like today where I’m out on the porch using the wringer washer. It’s just chilly enough that we have to keep a fire in the woodstove, but also chilly enough that said woodstove runs us out of the house, too, LOL.

And what’s worse is when I take my hands out of the water and the cool air freezes my fingers. I bet I’ll be bitching tonight when my joints start thumping. Oh, well. One does what one has to in order to get by. The hubby and I joke that if this country would ever go into an honest-to-God depression, it would be folks like us who would survive because we already do just that.

I ponder those sorts of things. I can only image what the rich would do if their money ran out. Or what about a depression and some sort of magnetic pulse that renders all technology useless? Oh, the horrible effect it would have on national security and the medical professions, let alone everything else! Imagine the hysteria if Mr. Rich’s latest version of an iPhone no longer worked, if he couldn’t access his funds in Switzerland, and once all the money is gone, then what?

Thoughts like this spiral through my head when I think of some of my story ideas. But I know a lot of wealthy people—and those who live above and beyond their means—who would be devastated if they had to survive, had to wash their bodies and clothes in a creek or ride a bike or horse to the neighboring town.

I’m not officially into my  middle-age years, but I’m not a spring chicken anymore either; however, I remember the many times that my mother and I had no transportation and we’d walk to church together. Autumn always brings those memories to the forefront of my mind because one fall we walked to Sunday evening and Wednesday evening services quite often. My dad was working in West Virginia and had our only vehicle. Those autumn nights were balmy, the dried leaves skittered across the hardtop road, reminding me of every horror movie I’d ever watched, and the spicy aroma of the leaves mixed with that crisp tang in the air only those who live where there is a true winter can understand.

I was about 13 or 14 at the time, but although times were hard then, too, the memories are fond ones.

This economy has everyone up in arms with worry. I worry too. My husband’s hours have been cut back from the normal five days a week to four. That will hurt us tremendously, but somehow we always manage to get by.
Yet how will others cope? I see houses closed upon, cars repo’ed, credit cards being maxed out and folks filing for bankruptcy…but here, we raise a huge garden, we eat venison, squirrel, rabbit and grouse, thus saving on the biggest expense of groceries: meat. I buy cheapie pop instead of name brands—if I even buy it because we drink a lot of Flavor-Aid and ice tea. I bake from scratch or buy a 79-cent box cake for snacking instead of a $15 cake out of the bakery.

And yet I get these comments from various souls who say, “But you write for men’s magazines and have pen names, so you should be rolling in the dough.”

Well, let me clarify this. A) yes, I do write for men’s mags and various epublishers, B) men’s mags pay well and my pen names are doing well, but C) I have four kids, two who are teenagers, and one thing that most non-writers don’t realize is that epublishers pay quarterly, so you’re waiting four months for your checks; magazines are usually payment on publication, so it can be six months to a year before you get your money. That said, when bills pile up and things get behind, what checks do you think go to playing catch up and paying off things? Hmm?

Besides, the American dollar is worth what now? About three cents? I’m off, I know, but I don’t think I’m that far off with the new regime in town. Heh.

There are so many ways to cut costs, but as I talk to people about such things, I realize something that’s a major problem—people often don’t want to give up their amenities or work harder to do what’s necessary to get by.

If it wasn’t for settlers in various countries, none of us would even be here. Look at what they went through to survive. When you stop and think about what they did, isn’t dropping all the movie channels and going back to basic satellite worth it?

Besides, all those latest films on the movie channels will end up on basic eventually.

So dear reader, I ask you this: what one thing do you feel you couldn’t live without? For me, it would be my laptop/Internet. I do 90% of my writing on my laptop and my Internet is my connection to my best friends. Oh I could use an electric typewriter, but I hate them and the features available on a laptop, pc, or mac aren’t on a typewriter, so I imagine I’d do a lot of cussing, LOL.

One evening, as I sat in the hay at the end of the field behind our house, I gazed across the tall grasses as the gloaming descended upon the landscape. The maple in the backyard masked the house, and the hay nodded in an evening breeze. God’s watercolors spread across the western sky, and crickets chirred around me. The kids laughed as they planted corn nearby, and Matthew looked on, monitoring their progress.

Something awakened within me; an awareness that had lain dormant until something stirred the embers there. At that moment, I realized that God had given me more riches than any person on this earth, more love than most people ever see in their entire lifetimes, and I was too self absorbed to see it until that moment that He opened my eyes.

It was then that I knew my dreams would come true. After all, hadn’t He given me a man who simply loved me for the soul that dwells within this body? Hadn’t he given me parents, who are more special than the rarest of gems, and children who amaze me every day? God was just waiting for me to wake up and notice the beauty of the gloaming and my family who was there with me. I’m happy, my cup runneth over, and that one thing that always seemed unattainable will arrive any day now.

I believe.

Don’t you?

All my love,

Faith

As always, my faithful friend, Emmy Ellis, helped me out. She designed my beautiful banner, static entry page, and gave me an email sig banner to boot so everything matches and looks classy and professional. Emmy, you are a gem, and I am ever so honored to call you friend. Thank you.

The second reason I let my old website go is because I want a new beginning. I’ve launched two new pen names that are doing extremely well (I’ve sold four manuscripts and have a nonfic article under consideration with a BIG print magazine–woot!), and I’ve returned to writing nonfiction again under my real name. I’ll announce my nonfic sales here, but my new nom de plumes will remain incognito. Some things my agent will represent; some things I will submit on my own.

I’ll offer my free books here. I will also offer writing advice when I have time to post it, musings on life, publishing news, hopes, dreams, and from time to time you’ll find a book review as well (so authors, you never know when your book might appear on my site).

I hope you will bookmark this site, dear readers, and visit often.

Love to all my readers and online friends,

Faith