Following on from yesterday’s post about the difficulties of the English language, Noreen came across the following letter from one David Truman of Fulham in the London Evening Standard of 18 November 1991:
Lines in honour of the rehabilitation of Frank Bough (by an inner-London primary school teacher trying to teach children English).
I take it you already know of tough and bough and cough and dough? Others may stumble, but not you On hiccough, thorough, laugh and through? I write in case you wish perhaps To learn of less familiar traps: Beware of heard, a dreadful word That looks like beard and sounds like bird. And dead; it’s said like bed, not bead; For goodness sake, don’t call it “deed”! Watch out for meat and great and threat (They rhyme with suite and straight and debt). A moth is not a moth in mother, Nor both in bother, broth in brother. And here is not a match for there, Nor dear for bear, or fear for pear. There’s dose and rose, there’s also lose (Just look them up) and goose and choose, And cork and work, and card and ward, And font and front, and word and sword, And do and go, and thwart and cart Come come, I’ve barely made a start! A dreadful language? Man alive, Who mastered it when I was five!
A couple of days ago I came across this wonderful collection of Windows error messages in haiku including quite a few I’d not seen before. I think my favourites are:
First snow, then silence. This thousand dollar screen dies so beautifully.
Chaos reigns within. Reflect, repent, and reboot. Order shall return.
Most people fail to realize that the dictates of any belief system are not the truth, and that memorizing beliefs often replaces authentic investigation.
Wat Tyler Country Park, Essex, originally uploaded by Whipper_snapper.
Weird. Very Monty Python. It suggests a whole new set of meanings for that lovely piece from Monty Python and the Holy Grail:
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony … You can’t expect to wield supreme executive power just ’cause some watery tart threw a sword at you! … I mean, if I went around sayin’ I was an emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me they’d put me away!
