The English lingua franca

Being a great fun of the English language and it's oddities...playing around with words (It's really punny!)..Came across this poem I decided to plagiarise and tickle my fancy.

I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough.
Others may stumble, but not you, On
Hiccough, thorough, laugh and through.
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps?

Beware of heard; a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird.
And dead: it's said like bed, not bead;
For goodness sake don't call it deed.
Watch out for meat and great and threat.
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt.)

A moth is not a moth in mother; nor both in bother, broth in brother;
And here is not a match for there,nor dear and fear for bear and pear.
And then there's dose and rose and lose
(just look them up) and goose and choose,
And cork and work, and card and ward,
And font and front, and work and sword,
And do and go, and thwart and cart.
Come, come! I've hardly made a start.

A dreadful language? Man alive! I mastered it when I was five!
I will teach you in my verse
Words like corps, corks, horse and worse.
For this phonetic labyrinth
Yields monkey, donkey, ninth and plinth,
Wounded, rounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.

Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dies and diet, lord and word;
Earth and hearth and clerk and herd;
Evil, devil, tomb, bomb, comb;
Doll, roll; dull, bull; some and home.
Finally - for I've had enough -
Through, though, thorough, plough, cough, tough,
While hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advise is give it up.

Meg Schell

Oh Fortuna!

I know I often get lambasted for my love of classical works, and one of my favourite classical pieces is "Oh Fortuna" by the German composer Carl Orff, which is often mis-attributed (if ever there was such a word in existence) to Mozart. I just love the way the composer makes use of the variation of volume to get the emotions into the song. it is often used in countless movies, commercials, etc to depict some calamity, impending catastrophe and all the scary stuff you can think of, which got me thinking. You probably have heard this song a million times, but it never registers on your mind. It topped the list of the most played classical music piece in the UK in the last 75 years. Listen to classical..it is good for your brain I hear.

I had a friend who when listening to a music piece would isolate individual musical instruments and analyse the performance of the instrumentalists on that song (the lead guitar in "Hotel California", the drums in "Je Suis un rockstar" (I am sure only me and my boss know this song heh heh heh!).

The composition of any great piece takes the effort of several minor but often ignored components, so don't assume your contribution is negligible in whatever role you are asked to play. Be it work, social activity or random chores, you may think what you do goes unnoticed, but when you don't do it, is when you and others discover just how significant that "little" effort is. You can be replaced yes, but your contribution has value.

You didn't know that now ..did you?

Ever wondered why you do some things?...Well I remember once when I was still a brat (7 year old me thinks). Back then we would like a ritual travel upcountry in Dec to see the grandfolks. This involved over 800km travelling from Mombasa where I lived at the time to good old Kendu Bay. One of the things I feared in "ocha" was the propensity of getting the odd thorn finding its way on the soles of my feet (I used to get the beat for discarding my shoes/slippers and walking barefoot every now and then...a brat I was!) So I got this ingenious idea to clear my routes off any thorns if i found any. As I was going on with my charitable activity, my grandfather (may his soul rest in eternal peace) caught up with me and severely scolded me. It is taboo I was told to clear the path of any thorns i was told. Several years on, i came to understand the reasoning behind this. When i was old enough to understand that i had to wear shoes/slippers at all times , my grandpa explained to me that removing thorns from the paths would make people less careful in watching where they are stepping. The thorns forced them to be vigilant and more careful. He had also explained to me the reason why my forefathers had their front teeth knocked off to reveal a gap. Well for those conversant with Luoland, snakes are quite the trailerload, and most of the venomous snakes would affect the nervous system and cause your teeth to clamp. The only way of administering the remedies and anti-venoms they had was to pour the medicine through the gap when the jaws were clenched shut.

So the next time you ridicule some of those taboos of yours without getting the thinking behind them, think twice. Your ancestors had a twisted sense of humour in their wisdom.