Combobulated ?

How's my mental health today?

I'm not sure, but I know I have very little energy at the moment. I think I'm going to take it very easy today - put my feet up, grab a book and some zzzz's - after I write this post.

Watching the 6 o'clock news the other day I was startled when I heard the weather announcer say, "Not the funnest place to be." The reference is immaterial; I was struck by the made up word. Do broadcasters not learn proper English? Colour commentators on live sports broadcasts are probably the biggest offenders when it comes to making up new words and brutalizing basic grammar.

I suppose that is how language changes and evolves over time.

Out of curiosity, I surfed the Internet for a while, searching out comments on the use of the English language. I found an amusing column at:

http://www.bouldertherapist.com/html/humor/WordPlays/theenglishlanguage.htm

I hope you find it as amusing as I did.

Commentary On The English 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, are 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 beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese?   Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend, that you comb thru annals of history but not a single annal? 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? If you wrote a letter, perhaps you bote your tongue?   Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Send shipments by car 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 wise guy are opposites? How can overlook and oversee be opposites, while quite a lot and quite a few are alike? How can the weather be hot as hell one day and cold as hell another?   Have you noticed that we talk about certain things only when they are absent? Have you ever seen a horseful carriage or a strapful gown? Met a sung hero or experienced requited love? Have you ever run into someone who was combobulated, gruntled, ruly or peccable? And where are all those people who ARE spring chickens or who would ACTUALLY hurt a fly?   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 clock goes off by going on.   English was invented 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. And why, when I wind up my watch, I start it, but when I wind up this essay, I end it.

Words are the leaves of the tree of language, 

of which, if some fall away, 

a new succession takes their place.
- John French