A focus on English

As I have mentioned more than once, I am an English teacher. When you teach English as a second language you tend to notice bits if the lingo which, maybe when you grow up with it, you don't pay so much attention to.

Using my own experiences as examples, reading translated works and everyday teaching and with a little help from internet I have put together just a few of the confusions foreign students have to cope with. Let's have some fun...

@ First, English is probably the only language where noses run and feet smell!
@ A slim chance and a fat chance mean the same thing whereas a wise man and a wise guy are opposites.
@ Quite a few and quite a lot mean the same thing.
@ A free gift? Aren't all gifts free!
@ If an orange is orange, why isn't a lime called a green or a lemon a yellow?
@ It ain't half confusing! Does this mean it's one eighth confusing or doubly so?
@ Do you resign and then resign again?
@ Mouse is to mice, as house is to... hice?
@ What is the singular of rice?
@ Speak is to spoken as squeak is to... squoken?

Then there is a question of pronunciation which baffles even the most learned of pupils...

@ Through, plough, tough, cough, dough and hiccough
@ Heart, beard, heard
@ Neither, leisure, weight and weird
@ Lousy or lousy, I'm not sure which is worse! 
@ Tomb, bomb, comb...
@ Potato, tomato
@ Heir or air?

Now let's look at some places in the British Isles:
There's Greenwich, Reading, Berkshire, Gloucester, Worcester, Leicester, Wrotham, Plymouth, Derby and so on. None of them comply with the rules.

Just a comment: They are mentioned as 'the Shires' as in wire but each one is separately pronounced as ' ----- shire' as in 'sheer'. Hmmmm. Weird.

See here for a poem I have just discovered whilst scanning internet. It explains it all! (or does it?)

It is said that if it hadn't been for William Shakespeare, who popularized the English language during the 16th century, then we would all be speaking French  now!

Hope you all have a great weekend.