Becase we Hate Logik

I can’t spell.

It’s a well-doccumented fact going all the way back to kindergarden when I decided the word ‘knife’ was best served with three letters. Since then I’ve improved somewhat, maneging to spell ‘moast’ wrong three differant ways in the same paragraf, proving that I may be creative even in my failure. In all honesty, I would probably have flunked multiple freshman English corses without the aid of spellcheck, which is truely the best invention since sliced bread. Today, I have at least grasped the concept that ‘k’ and ‘c’ are not as interchangeable as they might seem, and ‘qu’ and ‘cu’ are neither acceptable words in their own right nor widly understood when as subsitutes. I can now manage a high school language class without makeing a compleat and utter fool of myself.

That’s not to say I’m a good speller. Nor is it to say I want to be. You see, there’s a wonderfull little thing in this world called logic. It’s beautifull, orderly, well-understood by all, and valued by everyone except whatever idiot created the this insensibale language. This is an essay on insanity.

We call it English. Let’s start with ‘moast,’ shall we? M-O-A-S-T. If ever logic dared invade the perversity of English, that’s how we would spell it. That’s how we spell its ryme, ‘roast,’ which makes perfect sense, but no. We couldn’t have things making sense, now could we? We got ‘roast’ right, but then we decided buchering ‘moast’ wasn’t enough, so we figured ‘post’ should be lacking a vital vowel as well.

I’m not picky; all I want is for someone to stick another letter in there somewhere. It could be an ‘e’ at the end or an ‘a’ in the middle, or even another ‘o’ if the mood strikes you, just choose one, will you please? ‘Lost’ and ‘most’ were never meant to ryme. My freinds are all a bit too aware of my lack of conformity to this abomanation we call language, what with the misspelled birthday cards and my stubbern refusal to spell freinds with the proper ‘i’ ‘e’ orientation. But, really, sound it out as it’s spelled and what do you get? ‘Fry – ends’. Whoes brillient idea was that? Of corse, we were all taught in kindergarden that ‘i’ comes before ‘e’ except after ‘c’ which I firmely believe was thought up by some sadist who loved watching small children suffer. Are we just discounting ‘science,’ which, in fact, has a ‘c’ then ‘ie’ in the proper order, while ‘beige,’ ‘deign,’ ‘society,’ and ‘weird,’ all desided to get together and make our lives hell? Someone told me that there was a brillient persen out there on the wide, wide, web, who decided to count up the number of words in English that follow the rule verses the ones that don’t, and found that the rule is actully wrong more than it is right.

Sadists, I’m telling you. If our heinous spelling tradition of utter chaos isn’t enough for you, we English speakers have plenty of other fun little quirks for you to get used to. Ever heard of a house burning up? Well, it’s burning down at the same time. Why? Because the wood’s flammable and the roof’s inflammable and the walls are inflammable and so it all goes up in flames. And when you talk about it the next day, you’ll say the fire was so hot it mealted the television and it was so cool. What was that about logic? Oh, it’s up in the sky somewhere, filling in a complaint form that’ll be filled out later.

Filed under the letter ‘p’ along side ‘pineApple‘ which is not remotely related to a pine tree or an apple. But then, I suppose in a land of logiclessness (which, if we actually knew how grammer worked would be a word) nonsense becomes sense. So I suck at spelling. I’m still sore that defenate is spelled ‘D-E-F-I-N-I-T-E,’ which doesn’t in any sense ryme with ‘finite,’ though by all rights they match better than cat and rat. Not to mention I can say ‘anywhere’ but I have to stop and put a space in between ‘any time,’ as all my moose, mice, and oxen bemoan their illogical names.

To add to that, I would be much obliged if anyone could give me a satisfactory answer as to why it is I can say ‘impeccable,’ but ‘peccable’ is nonsense or why I bear the brunt of strange looks when I say ‘fragile’ as it’s supposed to be said. Or did the ‘e’ disappear off the end somewhere while I was wallowing in the travesty of ‘moast?’ I am positively incensed by all this insanity, though had I any sense I would find it rather odd that a verb form of angry is, by grammatical defenition, the opposite – in – of ‘cense’, which means to ritually perfume something with the oder of burning incense. A fork in the road is positively idiotic, as in no world is there a fork with two prongs faceing in opposite directions, and even if there were, I would insist on there being a matching spoon. And can I even begin to vocalize my problems with ‘loose’ and ‘lose’? They have the same ‘o’ sound, so why don’t we have a second ‘o’ in lose? Oh, I remember. Because English is on a wich hunt for any and all things logical.

We wind our telephone lines in circles, a stern fascial expression can be likened to a deceased kitchen insterment, raze and raise mean precisely the opposite, and we seem far too fond of coming up with diffarent meanings for our various spellings of ‘there’. I know we all have enourmous fun harping on about how difficult Spanish word tenses are, but at the same time you do have to feel just a little bit sorry for the rest of the world learning English. Sure, the Spanish have their monstrously difficult verb tenses and female and male pronouns. But this is United States of America, land of freedom and choise. We didn’t just decided to screw logic – though we were doing a fine job of that – we’ve killed it, hacked it into a million bits, and set fire to the pieces.

So you’ll forgive me if I excuse myself from the bonfire; I don’t particularlly enjoy watching my dear logic cry as it’s condemed by our gloriosely impracticle English language.