Screwy pronunciations can mess up your mind! For example...If you have a rough cough, climbing can be tough when going through the bough on a tree! Let's face it — English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England.
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? 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? Sometimes I think all the folks who grew up speaking English should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what other language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? 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. If Dad is Pop, how's come Mom isn't Mop? Enough Already!
The Des-Moines Writing Center/Learning Commons is offering 1-credit summer internships to students w
New Location!The Ellensburg Learning Commons has moved from Hertz Hall to our new location in the Brooks Library
We Moved!Last fall, the Ellensburg Learning Commons, including the Math Center and the Writing Center, moved