Dear English,
Though I revel in the art to be made with you, I fully acknowledge that you are ridiculous.
(Yes, ridiculous. “Deserving or inspiring ridicule; absurd, preposterous, or silly”, that’s you.)
You contradict your own rules as often as you follow them, as if you’re not even trying to make sense of yourself. Anyone able to read this blog post in the tongue in which I typed it should give themselves a round of applause. I feel I owe myself a treat just for being able to thus convey my ideas. We’re geniuses, all of us! Geniuses with a dum-dum language!
This truth was driven home to me after reading a post by Ruth Layne on her blog, Misadventures of a Would-Be Writer. Hey, y’know what, English? You Should Read This. Entitled “Lots of English. Whole Lots”, it points out what a troublesome means of communication you are – not just for brave souls attempting to master you as a second language, but even for your native speakers. Even I, who have heard you spoken since my days in the womb; have spoken you myself since my mouth could manage the phonemes; I who have gobbled through books filled cover to cover with your words, and who have written books, poems, articles, essays of my own – even I do not pretend to wholly understand you!
Fortunately, one does not have to wholly understand a thing to love it.
Love you indeed,
Danielle
Ever On Word 
I’m a word nerd. I share your love hate relationship with the English language.
I think most of us word nerds do. X)
Thanks for the share! And I love your graphic. Where did you find it? Or are you more brilliant than I and develop it all on your own?
You’re quite welcome, and thank you! I Google Image searched “why English is hard to learn”, or something like that, and this list of phrases was one of the most reoccurring results (along with the poem you included in your post on the subject!). I added the accusation of drunkenness myself, courtesy of the text feature in Microsoft Paint. I’m an artist of simple tools. (:
Ah, English is awesome! Complicated, yes, but awesome. Who needs a straightforward language? Apart from, y’know, people who need to talk to each other…
Precisely. So long as nobody bothers with unambiguous communication, English is tiptop!
Fabulous post. It’s almost a love-hate relationship isn’t it? Only, who can hate English, except of course, you’ve missed a missed used word (i.e. forward instead of foreword) only after ordering 10 copies of your book! At that time, it is a love-hate relationship.
I loved your list of sentences, and only had to read #20 twice before I could read it correctly. 🙂 Funny how your mind doesn’t acknowledge that they are the same word with different meanings until you’re reading the context.
And yes, I know I meant to say a misused word!
“Misused” vs. “missed used” — yet another easy English oops to make. I discover (and rediscover) bunches of them every day. X)
Love, hate… passion is passion, and words are mine. (:
And the mind is indeed a marvelous thing — as is context! Put ’em together, and we’ve almost got this language licked!