#682 Uneasy Language

We all know the English language has lots of traps for foreigners trying to learn it.
Someone who’s Polish, for instance, who wants to market a special candy he calls a Polish Cream, has to be sure that he always capitalizes the word, lest people think they should use it to polish things.
Likewise, it’s tough for anyone to figure out the difference between read and read if the sentence doesn’t give some clue as to tense, as in “I will read the book” and “I have read the book.”
You’d think somewhere along the way some international English word board would have said okay, from here on out when someone is going to read a book, we can spell it reed. Better yet, so people don’t think we are beating it with a grass stalk, let’s spell it r-i-e-d. It’s an untaken word and it honors the “I before E except after C except as an A as in neighbor and weigh” formula we once read about in school.
Then you got your plural problems. How do you tell a foreigner why fish is the plural noun of fish? Much less, that it’s also a verb.
I like to fish in a school of fish to get a fish to eat.
Then there’s deer and moose. Single or plural it’s all the same thing. Makes you think we never cared enough to get to know a moose individually doesn’t it.
You know moose. They all look alike.
Except Bullwinkle or course. Which name always seemed to have an effete feel. Makes you think it could be a insulting slang word for a steer.
The other day, someone made a great point against an argument I was making and I had to say, touché. So I was thinking, if I had never seen the written word, and the point wasn’t that good, would I have said one-che’?
And what about hijinks?
If you’re tired and don’t have the energy to really frolic uncontrollably, but still what to be part of the crowd, is it possible to engage in just one hijink?
America, ya gotta love it.