English curiosities

Hi, students!


Some English curiosities for you. Read them and tell us if you agree, and if you have another cusiosity, share with us!


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.

Quicksand works 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?

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? Is it an odd, or an end?

If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught?

If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?

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.

Television again...

It used to be as simple as getting the directions to Sesame Street or spending the afternoon with Barney or Mr. Rogers. But if the latest Nielsen ratings are any indication, today’s children are more interested in watching people eat blended pig guts and cow tongues than singing songs and learning their ABCs.

Figures released by Nielsen Media Research in March and April show that Fear Factor,  NBC’s gross-out reality series, is prime time’s third most-watched program among 2-to-5-year-olds, behind only CBS’s Survivor and ABC’s My Wife and Kids.

The rating of children watching the adult-oriented shows may be misrepresentative of what children are really watching and may represent of what their parents are watching instead.

“My kids don’t watch those kinds of shows”, said Pamela Greene, whose five children range from 16 months to 8 years old. “We watch things like Disney and Discovery Kids. I’m not happy with a lot of shows that are on network TV”.

She said that her children spend their TV time watching shows such as Disney’s Even Stevens and Cartoon Network’s Thundercats and Power Rangers. However, local Nielsen ratings suggest that children are watching the same thing as other children in the area.

According to Allan Josephson, a professor of psychiatry at Medical College of Georgia, the ratings could be attributed to the baby-sitter phenomenon – a general lack of human interaction – and could have detrimental effects on children. “Children that age don’t have the ability to distinguish between fiction and reality”, Dr. Josephson said. “They don’t the cognitive capacity. The ratings show a general lack of supervision”.

Mrs. Greene said she believes children learn from the TV programs they watch – and the lessons being taught may not always be the ones she wants children to learn. “I think adult reality TV is awful”, she remarked. “These shows are teaching children that you do whatever it takes to get ahead. They are teaching them that it’s OK to cheat and steal to get what you want”.

But children in the 2-to-5 age bracket don’t have the ability to learn those lessons, Dr. Josephson said. “It just goes completely over their heads”, he said. “It won’t teach them anything. It’ll just scare them”. (...)

The ratings could be indicative of a bigger problem with society. “It’s a sign that these parents can’t be bothered to do something active with their children”, Dr. Josephson said. “Children in that age bracket should be doing things like physical motor play, group interaction, the kind of stuff kids see on Sesame Street”.

TASK:

1. Read the text and write a paragraph (5 lines) of the impact of television in our society.