Humor for Grammar Whizzes

(and for all the rest of you, something to read that when you are done you will ask, "What was so funny?")

OWED TO A SPELL CHECKER

I have a spelling checker
It came with my PC
It plane lee marks four my revue
Miss steaks aye can knot sea
Eye ran this poem threw it
You should be glad two no
It's very polished in it's weigh
My checker tolled me sew
A checker is a bless sing
It freeze yew lodes of thyme
It helps me right all stiles of verse
And aides me when aye rime
To rite with care is quite a feet
Of witch won should be prowed
And wee mussed dew the best wee can
Miss stakes are know aloud
And now bee cause my spelling
Is checked with such grate care
There are know flaws within my site
Of nun eye am a wear
Each frays come posed up on my screen
Eye trussed to be a joule
The checker pours over every word
To cheque some spelling rule
That's why aye brake in two averse
My righting wants to pleas
Sow now eye sea why aye dew prays
Such soft wear for pea seas

OWED TO A SPELL CHECKER
(slightly different version)

Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.
Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.
As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
Its rare lea ever wrong.
Eye have run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleased two no
Its letter perfect awl the weigh
My chequer tolled me sew.

Our Language!

There's 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, two geese. So one moose, two meese?  One index, two indices?

Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend, that you comb through the annals of history but not a single annal?

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 preacher praught?  If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?  If you wrote a letter, perhaps you bote your tongue?

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?  Park on driveways and drive on parkways?

How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise  man and a wise guy are opposites?  How can overlook and oversee be opposites, while quite a lot and quite a few are alike?  How can the weather be hot as hell one day and cold as hell another?

How you noticed that we talk about certain things only when they are absent?  Have you ever seen a horseful carriage or a strapful gown? Met a sung hero or experienced requited love?

Have you ever run into someone who was dis-combobulated, grunted,  ruly or peccable?  And where are all those people who ARE spring chickens or who would ACTUALLY hurt a fly?

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 out and in which an alarm clock goes off by going on.

English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race (which, of course, isn't a race at all).

That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible. And why, when I wind up my watch, I start it, but when I wind up this essay, I end it!