Much More Difficult

A famous doctor was protesting to the owner of a garage about the large sum of money he had to pay for repairs to his car.

"All this for a couple of hours' work," he exclaimed. "Why, you people are paid at a higher rate than we are."

"Well, you see," replied the garage man, "you've been working on the same model since the beginning of time, but we have to learn all about a new model every year."

Functional Classification of the Verb

Verb

Notional verb Link Verb Auxiliary Verb Modal Verb

Pat enjoys discos. Mr. Brown is a doctor. Sue is reading now. You should go there.

**TASK 4. Define the function of the underlined verbs in the joke below.

A Crazy Language

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 or French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, aren't 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’ is ‘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?

Sometimes I think all the English speakers shouldbe committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what 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.

English wasinvented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race (which, of course, isn't a race at all). That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.

Date: 2015-12-24; view: 1016