Reasons Why English Is Hard To Learn

• The bandage was wound around the wound.
• The farm was used to produce produce.
• The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
• We must polish the Polish furniture.
• He could lead if he would get the lead out.
• The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
• Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present
  the present.
• A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.
• When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
• I did not object to the object.
• The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
• There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
• They were too close to the door to close it.
• The buck does funny things when the does are present.
• A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
• To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
• The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
• After a number of injections my jaw got number.
• Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.
• I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
• How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

You think writing in English is hard enough, try speaking it. English spelling
and pronunciation is quite inconsistent to the point of barbaric. A,E,I,O,U
and Y have so many different ways of pronunciation that it baffles most students
of English. In the past few years, there is a growing trend of ESL schools
in Vancouver and the increasing number of foreigners who come to Vancouver
to study English. The great majority are Japanese and Koreans with Mexicans
and Eastern Europeans getting into the mix. Most of those that I met would
tend to say that English has a lot of exceptions to its rules. I also am not
a native speaker of English so I share the sentiment of English being quite
inconsistent in its rules of pronunciation and spelling. Take a simple name
like ‘RO’, most of the time you have to spell that name out because
it might mean Row, Rowe, Roe or Rawe. From what I heard names like ‘Yamaguchi’ or ‘ Steponavičius’,
or ‘Jesczcepanski’ does not have to be spelled out from the country
of its origin. You would think that two words like ‘love’ and ‘move’ would
rhyme but we all know the answer to that. A ‘C’ followed by an ‘E’ normally
is pronounced like an ‘S’ (like mice), but nobody plays ‘sock-ser’,
it is ‘sokker’. Ordering ‘itse kre’yam’ would
elicit a blank look in Dairy Queen unless you properly pronounce ‘ice
cream’.

Despite being quite challenging to learn, it is amazing that English still
end up to be the international language of business and commerce.

Funny Olympics Cartoon again :

On to Oodles Of Odd Odes and Opinions (hey I can do it too you know. Chris,
eat your heart out )

News 1 : Too Lazy to think of a title

I mentioned previously about the French author who wrote a book called ‘Hello
Laziness’. If the book seems to interest you, then you would not want
to miss the first ever ‘National Convention of the Idle’ being held
in the Italian village of Champoluc.

Quoting from the BBC

‘Participants have been promised that the seminar on idleness will
last less than half an hour, a long siesta is obligatory and they will receive
tips on perfecting laziness.

The organisers will also present a series of 10 commandments
on how to avoid effort. These include letting others always make the first
move, remembering that exercise is for other people, and never, ever volunteering
for anything. ‘

News 2 : Nothing gets scarier than a group of bored math
geeks.

Ever wanted to be a movie director of the slasher flick variety ? According
to some horror movie-loving math geeks from

King’s College in London, the perfect equation for making
a scary film is

(es+u+cs+t)2 +s+(tl+f)	+	(a+dr+fs)	+ sin x – 1
2		n

literally it means sum of escalating music (es) plus the unknown (u) plus
chase scenes (cs) plus the sense of being trapped (t) squared , then add shock
(s) plus the sum of true life(tl) and fantasy(f), all divided by 2. Add to that the
sum of whether the character is alone(a) plus whether in the dark (dr) plus
the film setting (fs) divided by the number of people in the film (n). Lastly,
add blood and guts (sin x) and subtract 1 for every stereotype. Whew!

According to the equation, The Shining is the perfect horror film (as Quoted
from Sky Movies
Press Release)