A widespread Facebook linguistic gag of unknown origin…
What a load of bollocks the English language is.
I was talking to my eternally-un-named friend about the apostrophe (or not) in ‘It’s”.
“It’s” = It is.
But the possessive of it – “its” – for no logical reason – has no apostrophe.
No rhyme or reason.
It’s English!
I think I was over 30-years old when I found out the correct spelling is LIAISE not LIASE.
Totally mad.
English is designed to confuse foreigners… and sometimes native speakers.
I told my eternally-un-named friend: “English is mad. Even the so-called ‘rules’ are mad. There’s that saying Don’t forget it’s I before E except after C… But the truth is, although it is always E before I after C, it is not always I before E before C…
“That is how Britain won an Empire,” I told her, with some authority. “The British just confused foreigners into submission by teaching them the English language…although the way the English kept the Empire subdued for so long was by persuading other countries to play cricket – the most boring game on earth… The Scots never fell for this so we were never subjugated…”
I said all this, as I say, with some authority but, of course, my eternally-un-named friend – ever a dogged online researcher – came up with a quote to prove me wrong:
“As it turns out, for every ‘ceiling’ there’s a ‘concierge’, a ‘conscience’ and some ‘celibacies’. And for every ‘deceit’, there are ‘deficiencies’, ‘delicacies’ and ‘dicier’ things… The iciest glaciers make idiocies out of the conceit of Except after C.”
I tried to argue that ‘concierge’ is not really fully an English word, but I was outnumbered by her examples…
Oh the linguistic shame!
SO IT GOES - John Fleming's blog 