“Hello, how are you”?

In French that would be, “Bonjour, comment allez-vous”? In German it would be, “Guten tag, wie geht es Ihnen”? In Spanish it’s, “Hola, como estas”? I kick myself a bit for not being as fluent as I used to be in some of these languages. People whose mother tongue is not English must have their work cut out for them learning our language.

English has some inconsistencies such as the use of “ough”. Take a sentence like, “I thought the doughnut was tough because my stomach felt rough and I’d had enough so I through it into the slough”. Then we have singulars and plurals. One tooth two teeth, one goose two geese, but it’s not one moose-two meece but two moose!

We have one mouse and two mice, but one house and two houses. We know that teachers teach and preachers preach and we say a teacher has taught, not “teached” but a preacher has preached, not “praught”. If we infer a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?

When lights are out it means we can’t see them but when stars are out it means we can see them.