A Uni-Verse of Language
By Richard Lederer
Have you heard the woman who asked a Boston cab driver where she could get scrod? “I didn't know that the verb had that past tense,” muttered the cabbie.
That classic relies on the fact that verb tenses in English appear to be erratic, fraught with a fearful asymmetry and puzzling unpredictability. Some verbs form their past tense by adding -d, -ed, or -t -- walk, walked; bend, bent. Others go back in time through an internal vowel change -- begin, began; sing, sang. Another cluster adds -d or -t and undergoes an internal vowel change -- lose, lost; buy, bought. And still others don't change at all -- set, set; put, put. No wonder, then, that our eyes glaze and our breath quickens when we have to form the past tense of verbs like dive, weave, shine, sneak, and baby-sit.
The past tenses of verbs in our language cause so many of us to become tense that I've written a poem about the insanity:
A Tense Time with Verbs
The verbs in English are a fright.
How can we learn to read and write?
Today we speak, but first we spoke;
Some faucets leak, but never loke.
Today we write, but first we wrote;
We bite our tongues, but never bote.
Each day I teach, for years I taught,
And preachers preach, but never praught.
This tale I tell; this tale I told;
I smell the flowers, but never smold.
If knights still slay, as once they slew,
Then do we play, as once we plew?
If I still do as once I did,
Then do cows moo, as they once mid?
I love to win, and games I've won;
I seldom sin, and never son.
I hate to lose, and games I lost;
I didn't choose, and never chost.
I love to sing, and songs I sang;
I fling a ball, but never flang.
I strike that ball, that ball I struck;
This poem I like, but never luck.
I take a break, a break I took;
I bake a cake, but never book.
I eat that cake, that cake I ate;
I beat an egg, but never bate.
I often swim, as I once swam;
I skim some milk, but never skam.
I fly a kite that I once flew;
I tie a knot, but never tew.
I see the truth, the truth I saw;
I flee from falsehood, never flaw.
I stand for truth, as I once stood;
I land a fish, but never lood.
About these verbs I sit and think.
These verbs don't fit. They seem to wink
At me, who sat for years and thought
Of verbs that never fat or wought.
The most universally confused pair of verbs in English are lay and lie. When the Enron Corporation scandal broke in early 2002 and I noted the last name of the disgraced CEO (Ken Lay), a little quatrain immediately knocked on the door of my imagination and said, “Write me!”:
Take the Money Enron
The difference between lie and lay
Has fallen into deep decay.
But now we know from Enron’s shame
That Lay and lie are just the same.
Linguists Otto Jespersen and Mario Pei have branded English spelling as a "pseudohistorical and antieducational abomination" that is "the world's most awesome mess." The chasm that stretches between how words are spelled and how they actually sound is the letter combination –ough:
Tough Stough
The wind was rough.
The cold was grough.
She kept her hands
Inside her mough.
And even though
She loved the snough,
The weather was
A heartless fough.
It chilled her through.
Her lips turned blough.
The frigid flakes
They blough and flough.
They shook each bough,
And she saw hough
The animals froze --
Each cough and sough.
While at their trough,
Just drinking brough,
Were frozen fast
Each slough and mough.
It made her hiccough --
Worse than a sticcough.
She drank hot cocoa
For an instant piccough.
One of the first spelling formulas we are taught in school is “i before e, except after c.” To show how much this rule was made to be broken, I offer a poem that I hope will leave you spellbound:
E-I, I-E -- Oh?
There's a rule that's sufficeint, proficeint, efficeint.
For all speceis of spelling in no way deficeint.
While the glaceirs of ignorace icily frown,
This soveriegn rule warms, like a thick iederdown.
On words fiesty and wierd it shines from great hieghts,
Blazes out like a beacon, or skien of ieght lights.
It gives nieghborly guidance, sceintific and fair,
To this nonpariel language to which we are hier.
Now, a few in soceity fiegn to deride
And to forfiet thier anceint and omnisceint guide,
Diegn to worship a diety foriegn and hienous,
Whose counterfiet riegn is certain to pain us.
In our work and our liesure, our agenceis, schools,
Let us all wiegh our consceince, sieze proudly our rules!
It's plebiean to lower our standards. I'll niether
Give in or give up -- and I trust you won't iether!
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Some words just can’t buy a vowel – not an a or an e or an i or an o or a u. With tongue firmly planted in cheek, some call these words that have had a vowel removement "abstemious" words, a facetious label since abstemious (along with facetious) contains every major vowel, and in sequence.
In the poem you’re about to read you’ll find a heavenly three-syllable word that eschews the major vowels -- syzygy, which means "the nearly straight-line configuration of three celestial bodies."
A Sonnet to Abstemious Words
Once did a shy but spry gypsy
Spy a pygmy, who made him feel tipsy.
Her form, like a lynx, sylph, and nymph,
Made all his dry glands feel quite lymph.
He felt so in synch with her rhythm
That he hoped she'd fly to the sky with him.
No sly myth would he try on her;
Preferring to ply her with myrrh.
When apart, he would fry and then cry,
Grow a cyst and a sty in his eye.
That's why they would tryst at the gym,
By a crypt, where he'd write a wry hymn.
Her he loved to the nth degree,
Like a heavenly syzygy.
A capitonym is a word that changes meaning and pronunciation when it is capitalized, as illustrated in the next two quatrains:
Job's Job
In August, an august patriarch,
Was reading an ad in Reading, Mass.
Long-suffering Job secured a job
To polish piles of Polish brass.
Herb's Herbs
An herb store owner, name of Herb,
Moved to rainier Mt. Rainier,
It would have been so nice in Nice,
And even tangier in Tangier.
As you read the next poem, note the unusual pattern of the end-rhymes:
Listen, readers, toward me bow.
Be friendly; do not draw the bow.
Please don't try to start a row.
Sit peacefully, all in a row.
Don't squeal like a big, fat sow.
Do not the seeds of discord sow.
Even though each couplet ends with the same word, the rhymes occur on every other line. That’s because bow, row, and sow each possess two different pronunciations and spellings. These rare pairings are called heteronyms:
A Hymn to Heteronyms
Please come through the entrance of this little poem.
I guarantee it will entrance you.
The content will certainly make you content,
And the knowledge gained sure will enhance you.
A boy moped around when his parents refused
For him a new moped to buy.
The incense he burned did incense him to go
On a tear with a tear in his eye.
He ragged on his parents, felt they ran him ragged.
His just deserts they never gave.
He imagined them out on some deserts so dry,
Where for water they'd search and they'd rave.
At present he just won't present or converse
On the converse of each high-flown theory
Of circles and axes in math class; he has
Many axes to grind, isn't cheery.
He tried to play baseball, but often skied out,
So when the snows came, he just skied.
He then broke a leg putting on his ski boots,
And his putting in golf was in need.
He once held the lead in a cross-country race,
'Til his legs started feeling like lead
And when the pain peaked, he looked kind of peaked.
His liver felt liver, then dead.
A number of times he felt number, all wound
Up, like one with a wound, not a wand.
His new TV console just couldn't console
Or slough off a slough of despond.
The rugged boy paced 'round his shaggy rugged room,
And he spent the whole evening till dawn
Evening out the crosswinds of his hate.
Now my anecdote winds on and on.
He thought: "Does the prancing of so many does
Explain why down dove the white dove,
Or why pussy cat has a pussy old sore
And bass sing in bass notes of their love?"
Do they always sing, "Do re mi" and stare, agape,
At eros, agape, each minute?
Their love's not minute; there's an overage of love.
Even overage fish are quite in it.
These bass fish have never been in short supply
As they supply spawn without waiting.
With their love fluids bubbling, abundant, secretive,
There’s many a secretive mating.
Thanks Richard for the titillating look into the English language.
John wolf
