What is wrong with the Immigrants ?

What is wrong with the people who emigrate to the United States?  Why can’t they speak our language like we do?  As Henry Higgins said in My Fair Lady…”why can’t they be more like us?”

If you agree with me that English is easy— then please help me with some of the following which I’m having difficulty explaining to some of my relatives who have moved  to the United States.

 1) The bandage was wound around the wound.  2)  The farm was used to produce  produce .  3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more  refuse. 4)  We must polish  the Polish  furniture.  5)  He could lead if he  would get the lead  out. 6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert. 7)  Since there is no time like the present, he thought it  was time  to present  the present . 8)  A bass was painted  on the head of the bass  drum. 9) When shot at, the dove dove into the  bushes. 10) I did not  object to the  object.  11)  The insurance was  invalid for the  invalid.  12)  There was a row  among the oarsmen about how to row . 13) They  were too close to  the door to close  it.  14) The buck  does funny things when the does are present. 15) A  seamstress and a  sewer fell down into a sewer line.  16) To help  with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.  17)  The wind was too  strong to wind the  sail.  18) Upon seeing the  tear in the painting I shed a tear.  19)  I had to subject  the subject to a  series of tests.  20) How can I intimate this to my  most intimate  friend?

 Let’s face it English is a difficult language to master.  There is no egg in eggplant, nor  ham in hamburger; neither apple or pine in pineapple. 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, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices? Doesn’t it  seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? 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 preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Let’s  face it – English is a crazy language.  You can ship by truck and send cargo by ship?  We have noses that run and feet that smell?

How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? 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 it out and in which, an alarm goes off by going on.

English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which,of course, is not a race at all . Why is it that when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.  

PS. – Why doesn’t ‘Buick’ rhyme with  ‘quick’

What is wrong with the immigrants….not much.  Bless ’em for keeping on trying to understand us.