Fun with English

Language, for most people is a means of communication. We will not talk about such people. We will focus instead on those for whom language is a toy to be fiddled with. Let us look at instances where people used the English language like a bat to produce Tendulkar like cover drives. Let us frolic through the amusing byways of English. Here is a collection of some of the craziest,funniest, and wackiest things done with English.

Firstly, the words. You must have seen that whatsapp forward highlighting the special thing about the word "Queue". It retains the original pronunciation even after 4 letters are dropped. 'Queuing' contains 4 vowels in a row. If the word "Facetious" has the vowels in order, "Uncomplimentary" has them in the reverse order. I will leave it to you to figure out the speciality of words like Overstuffed, defenselessness, ambidextrously and latchstring.
We also have whatsapp riddles like this one:
What five-letter word becomes shorter when you add two letters to it? Ans: Short

Okay, let us end this with a few more funny Q and As:
Is there a word in the English language that uses all the vowels including "y" ? Ans: Unquestionably!

When I was a kid, my English teacher looked my way and said, "name two pronouns."
I said, “Who, me?”

What is the difference between Ignorance and Apathy? Ans: I don't know and I don't care !

One can only observe words. But with sentences one can perform verbal gymnastics. I assume that you are aware of the popular ones like "Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs". A sentence like, "American Born Confused Desi Emigrated From Gujarat Here In Jersey" might put a smile on your face once you notice the 1st letter of every word.
Let us look at a meta sentence:

This sentence contains only three As, three Cs, two Ds, twenty-five Es, nine Fs, four Gs, eight Hs, twelve Is, three Ls, fifteen Ns, nine Os, eight Rs, twenty-four Ss, eighteen Ts, five Us, four Vs, six Ws, two Xs, and four Ys.

Then there is this sentence:
“I do not know where family doctors acquired illegibly perplexing handwriting nevertheless, extraordinary pharmaceutical intellectuality counterbalancing indecipherability, transcendentalizes intercommunications incomprehensibleness”.
Just count the number of letters in every word and you will know why it is famous.

If that sounded like a crazy thing, read this paragraph which tries to demonstrate how rhythm can be achieved in writing:

This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals–sounds that say listen to this, it is important.

Funny things can be done with ambiguities. Consider this sentence:
British left waffles on Falklands.
What does it mean? Did the British leave waffles behind, or is there waffling by the British political left wing?
Or take this line from a song by Ray Davies:
I'm glad I'm a man, and so is Lola. — This can mean "Lola and I are both glad I'm a man", or "I'm glad Lola and I are both men", or "I'm glad I'm a man, and Lola is also glad to be a man".

There is this story about king Croesus, this dude wanted to invade the great Persian empire and consulted the Oracle of Delphi. The Oracle said, "If Croesus goes to war, he will destroy a great empire.”. The king was happy and invaded Persia. The problem however with fortunetellers and psychics is that what they tell can be interpreted in multiple ways, the king learnt it the hard way. Croesus did destroy an Empire when he went to war; trouble was, that was his own empire and not the Persian empire!

Another variant of this is the famous sentence, "I never said she stole my money". This can have 7 different meanings depending on which word is stressed.
"I" didn't say she stole my money - someone else said it.
I "didn't" say she stole my money - I didn't say it.
I didn't "say" she stole my money - I only implied it.
And so on. Try stressing one word and see how the meaning changes.

Garden path sentences are sentences that fool you into misinterpreting them. Some examples:
The old man the boat - This will make sense once you realise that "Man" is a verb.
The complex houses married and single soldiers and their families - This baffling sentence will make sense once you understand that Complex = Housing complex and Houses = accommodates
Some of the most famous garden path sentences were constructed by the comedian Groucho Marx. Take a minute to appreciate how cleverly Groucho Marx misleads you in this sentence:
Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana - He is talking about the insect "Fruit fly" and the word "like" is used as in "I like ice creams" in the 2nd part of the sentence. Here is another quip by the master that uses the same trick: "I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas I don't know." One last example of Goucho's verbal pyrotechnics where he uses ambiguity to produce a twist:
"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn't it."

Other comedians also have used this trick to create sentences that have a twist in the end that changes meaning of the 1st part:
I like going to the park and watching the children run around because they don't know I'm using blanks." —Emo Philips
If I am reading this graph correctly—I'd be very surprised." —Stephen Colbert
I haven't slept for ten days, because that would be too long." —Mitch Hedberg
On the other hand, you have different fingers." —Steven Wright
If you aren't fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired, with enthusiasm
Hairdresser Vidal Sassoon promoted his brand with the slogan: "If you don't look good, we don't look good"

We will now move to shortest works of fiction. How about a poem? "Lines on the Antiquity of Microbes" by Strickland Gillilan reads like this: Adam/Had 'em

Then there is this short story : For sale: baby shoes, never worn - With just about 6 words, It produces emotions, why are they selling those shoes? What happened to the baby?
There are many more terribly tiny tales. Some samples:
I met my soulmate. She didn't.
"Wrong Number," Said a Familiar Voice
She left me for a better writer. She left me a better writer.

This story was made famous in a book that talks about the importance of punctuation:

A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and proceeds to fire it at the other patrons.
"Why?" asks the confused waiter, The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.
"Well, I'm a panda," he says, at the door. "Look it up."
The waiter turns to the relevant entry in the manual and, sure enough, finds an explanation. "Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

The thing about English is that it borrows so many words from other languages. If you were to get rid of all the Latin, French and Greek words you would be eliminating an astonishing 65% of the words in English! There have been attempts to get rid of all the non Germanic, borrowed words from English to attain linguistic purity. Poul Anderson had written an essay called "Uncleftish Beholding". It shows what English would look like if we were to eliminate all non-Germanic words, and use German-style compounds instead of borrowings to express new concepts, 4 lines from that:

For most of its being, mankind did not know what things are made of, but could only guess. With the growth of worldken, we began to learn, and today we have a beholding of stuff and work that watching bears out, both in the workstead and in daily life.
The underlying kinds of stuff are the *firststuffs*, which link together in sundry ways to give rise to the rest. Formerly we knew of ninety-two firststuffs, from waterstuff, the lightest and barest, to ymirstuff, the heaviest.

In case you are scratching your head, Uncleftish Beholding refers to Atomic theory ! The word Atom comes from the Latin word atomus, the word theory comes from the Greek word "Theoros". So he can not use them! Now read that again with these meanings in mind: being = existence, worldken = physics, beholding = theory, workstead = workplace, stuff = matter, firststuff = Element, waterstuff = Hydrogen, Barest = Simplest, ymirstuff = Uranium.

Any discussion about fun with language won't be complete without a reference to puns. Let us start with this:
I once did a theatrical performance about puns. It was a play on words.
This one is impressive: "The Romans built this way this way this way" - "This way" is used to mean 3 different things.
Anybody can play with one word, it takes real Punditry to play with many words in one sentence.

This joke does that to form a complex pun:
Farmer: My son left the farm. Now he polishes shoes in the city.
Camper: Oh, you make hay while the son shines!
Some more:
NUT SCREWS WASHERS AND BOLTS - This headline plays with every single word. In case you didn't get it, Nut = lunatic, Screw = Rape, Washer = janitor, Bolt = Run.
Foot Heads Arms Body - This headline refers to Michael Foot, who was appointed the chairman of a nuclear disarmament committee

I will leave you with an email forward(Yes, not long ago, there was such a thing called email forward!):
Here is an appreciation letter written by a clever guy who knew how to play with the language:

Bob Smith, can always be found

hard at work. Bob works independently, without

wasting time talking to colleagues. Bob never

thinks twice about assisting colleagues, and he always

finishes tasks on time. Often Bob takes extended

measures to complete his work, sometimes skipping coffee

breaks. Bob is a dedicated individual who has absolutely no

vanity in spite of his high accomplishments and profound

knowledge in his field. I firmly believe that Bob can be

classed as a high-caliber employee, the type which cannot be

dispensed with. Consequently, I duly recommend that Bob be

promoted to executive management, and a proposal will be

sent away as soon as possible.

That stupid dolt was reading over my shoulder when I wrote the report sent to you earlier today. Kindly read every second line (i.e.. 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, ..) for my true assessment of him.