Language Jokes 

|Amazing AnagramsDormitory == Dirty Room Desperation == A Rope Ends It The Morse Code == Here Come Dots Slot Machines == Cash Lost in 'em Animosity == Is No Amity Snooze Alarms == Alas! No More Z's Alec Guinness == Genuine Class Semolina == Is No Meal The Public Art Galleries == Large Picture Halls, I Bet A Decimal Point == I'm a Dot in Place The Earthquakes == That Queer Shake Eleven plus two == Twelve plus one Contradiction == Accord not in it This one's amazing: [From Hamlet by Shakespeare] To be or not to be: that is the question, whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Becomes: In one of the Bard's best-thought-of tragedies, our insistent hero, Hamlet, queries on two fronts about how life turns rotten. And the grand finale: ''That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.'' -- Neil A. Armstrong becomes: A thin man ran; makes a large stride; left planet, pins flag on moon! On to Mars!

|Eye Halve a Spelling ChequerEye halve a spelling chequerIt came with my pea seaIt plainly marques four my revueMiss steaks eye kin knot sea.Eye strike a key and type a wordAnd weight four it two sayWeather eye am wrong oar writeIt shows me strait a weigh. As soon as a mist ache is maidIt nose bee fore two longAnd eye can put the error riteIts rarely ever wrong.Eye have run this poem threw itI am shore your pleased two no Its letter perfect in it's weighMy chequer tolled me sew.-- Sauce unknown

|The English LanguageHave you ever wondered why foreigners have trouble with the English Language?Let's face itEnglish is a stupid language.There is no egg in the eggplantNo ham in the hamburgerAnd neither pine nor apple in the pineapple.English muffins were not invented in EnglandFrench fries were not invented in France.We sometimes take English for grantedBut if we examine its paradoxes we find thatQuicksand takes you down slowlyBoxing rings are squareAnd a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig. If writers write, how come fingers don't fing.If the plural of tooth is teethShouldn't the plural of phone booth be phone beethIf the teacher taught,Why didn't the preacher praught.If a vegetarian eats vegetablesWhat the heck does a humanitarian eat!?Why do people recite at a playYet play at a recital?Park on driveways andDrive on parkwaysYou have to marvel at the unique lunacyOf a language where a house can burn up asIt burns downAnd in which you fill in a form By filling it outAnd a bell is only heard once it goes!English was invented by people, not computersAnd it reflects the creativity of the human race(Which of course isn't a race at all)That is whyWhen the stars are out they are visibleBut when the lights are out they are invisibleAnd why it is that when I wind up my watchIt startsBut when I wind up this observation,It ends.

|Q: What does Santa call his wife at tax time?A: A dependent Claus.

|How many letters are there in the alphabet?Noel, noel, noel, noel ... the angels did say...E.T. went home.Get rid of X. There's too many unknowns in the world already!(Only one vowel left, or is that ''Anly ana vawal laft'' This may be stretching it a bit, but not unless you consider, as our good friends in Canada say: Good day, A!And we all know that M&Ms melt in your mouth, so it's safe to count them out.And of course, Y not.We might as well put off using U until later in the year: See U in SeptemberTWA just took off!!

|The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the EU rather than German which was the other possibility.As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a five year phase-in plan that would be known as ''Euro-English''.In the first year, ''s'' will replace the soft ''c''. Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard ''c'' will be dropped in favour of the ''k''. This should klear up konfusion and keyboards kan have 1 less letter.There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome ''ph'' will be replaced with ''f''. This will make words like ''fotograf'' 20% shorter.In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be ekspekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkorage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of the silent ''e''s in the language is disgraseful, and they should go away.By the fourth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing ''th'' with ''z'' and ''w'' with ''v''. During ze fifz year, ze unesesary ''o'' kan be dropd from vords kontaining ''ou'' and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi to understand ech ozer. Ze drem vil finali kum tru! And zen world!

|Dearest creature in creation,Study English pronunciation.I will teach you in my verseSounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.I will keep you, Suzy, busy,Make your head with heat grow dizzy.Tear in eye, your dress will tear.So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.Just compare heart, beard, and heard,Dies and diet, lord and word,Sword and sward, retain and Britain.(Mind the latter, how it's written.)Now I surely will not plague youWith such words as plaque and ague.But be careful how you speak:Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;Cloven, oven, how and low,Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.Hear me say, devoid of trickery,Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,Exiles, similes, and reviles;Scholar, vicar, and cigar,Solar, mica, war and far;One, anemone, Balmoral,Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;Gertrude, German, wind and mind,Scene, Melpomene, mankind.Billet does not rhyme with ballet,Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.Blood and flood are not like food,Nor is mould like should and would.Viscous, viscount, load and broad,Toward, to forward, to reward.And your pronunciation's OKWhen you correctly say croquet,Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,Friend and fiend, alive and live.Ivy, privy, famous; clamourAnd enamour rhyme with hammer.River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,Doll and roll and some and home.Stranger does not rhyme with anger,Neither does devour with clangour.Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,And then singer, ginger, linger,Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.Query does not rhyme with very,Nor does fury sound like bury.Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.Though the differences seem little,We say actual but victual.Refer does not rhyme with deafer.Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.Mint, pint, senate and sedate;Dull, bull, and George ate late.Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,Science, conscience, scientific.Liberty, library, heave and heaven,Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.We say hallowed, but allowed,People, leopard, towed, but vowed.Mark the differences, moreover,Between mover, cover, clover;Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,Chalice, but police and lice;Camel, constable, unstable,Principle, disciple, label.Petal, panel, and canal,Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,Senator, spectator, mayor.Tour, but our and succour, four.Gas, alas, and Arkansas.Sea, idea, Korea, area,Psalm, Maria, but malaria.Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.Doctrine, turpentine, marine.Compare alien with Italian,Dandelion and battalion.Sally with ally, yea, ye,Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.Say aver, but ever, fever,Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.Heron, granary, canary.Crevice and device and aerie.Face, but preface, not efface.Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.Large, but target, gin, give, verging,Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.Ear, but earn and wear and tearDo not rhyme with here but ere.Seven is right, but so is even,Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.Pronunciation -- think of Psyche!Is a paling stout and spikey?Won't it make you lose your wits,Writing groats and saying grits?It's a dark abyss or tunnel:Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,Islington and Isle of Wight,Housewife, verdict and indict.Finally, which rhymes with enough --Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?Hiccough has the sound of cup.My advice is to give up!

|BEING CREATIVE WITH TROUBLESOME KIN You are working on your family genealogy and for sake of example, let's say that your great-great uncle, Remus Starr, a fellow lacking in character, was hanged for horse stealing and train robbery in Montana in 1889. A cousin has supplied you with the only known photograph of Remus, showing him standing on the gallows. On the back of the picture are the words: ''Remus Starr: Horse thief, sent to Montana Territorial Prison, 1885. Escaped 1887, robbed the Montana Flyer six times. Caught by Pinkerton detectives, convicted and hanged, 1889.'' Pretty grim situation, right? But let's revise things a bit. We simply crop the picture, scan in an enlarged image and edit it with image processing software so that all that is seen is a head shot. Next, we rewrite the text: ''Remus Starr was a famous cowboy in the Montana Territory. His business empire grew to include acquisition of valuable equestrian assets and intimate dealings with the Montana railroad. Beginning in 1885, he devoted several years of his life to service at a government facility, finally taking leave to resume his dealings with the railroad. In 1887, he was a key player in a vital investigation run by the renowned Pinkerton Detective Agency. In 1889, Remus passed away during an important civic function held in his honor when the platform upon which he was standing collapsed.''

|How you can spot a Canadian, eh? -Don McGillivray (Ottawa columnist for Southam Newspapers)How do you tell a Canadian from an American?It used to be enough to ask him to say the alphabet. When the Canadian got to the end, he'd say ''zed'' instead of ''zee''. But 18 years of Sesame Street have taught a lot of Canadian kids to say ''zee,'' and it's starting to sound as natural as it does south of the 49th parallel.Another test used to be the word ''lieutenant''. Canadians pronounced it in the British was, ''leftenant'', while Americans say ''lootenant''. But American cop shows and army shows and movies have eroded that difference, too.Canadians have been adopting American spelling as well. They used to put a ''u'' in words like labour. The main organization in the country, the equivalent of the AFL-CIO, is still officially called the Canadian Labour Congress. But news organizations have been wiping out that distinction by adopting American spelling, mostly to make it easier to use news copy from such agencies as Associated Press without a lot of changes. So it's ''Canadian Labor Congress'' when the Canadian Press, the national news agency, writes about it.Some pronunciations, considered true tests of Canadians, are not as reliable as they're thought. Take the word ''house'' for example. When some Canadians say it, it sounds very Scottish in American ears. Visiting Americans trying to reproduce what they hear usually give the Canadian pronunciation as ''hoose''.The same for ''out'' and ''about''. The way some Canadians say them sounds like ''oot'' and ''aboot'' to many Americans. And when an American says ''house'' to a Canadian, the Canadian often hears a bit of an ''ay'' in it, something like ''hayouse''.But pronunctiaiton isn't a good test because people from different parts of Canada speak differently. A resident of the Western province of Alberta, where there has been a considerable inflow of settlers from the United States, may sound like a Montanan or a Dakotan.Then there's the ubiquitous Canadian expression ''eh?'' - pronounced ''ay?'' This is a better test because many Canadians tack it on to the end of every assertion to turn it into a question.

|Q: How many letters are there in the alphabet?A: Twenty-four, because E.T. went home.

|Q: What do you call Santa's Helpers?A: Subordinate clauses!

|The Committee for the Reduction of Redundancy and the Antiproliferation of Repetition has decided not to meet until they have their first meeting and thus will not be meeting until the first time.Their Pre-meeting Statement wanted to make this clear before they had their first meeting, so that it would not be unor confusing.So their first meeting will actually be their first meeting and they will not have a meeting before the first meeting.This should avoid having people show up for their first meeting before it is held, since to do so would be confusing to those who did so and this is what they want to avoid by reducing the confusion and lessening the repetition.

|An American will say, ''Hot day!'' A Canadian will say, ''Hot day, eh?'' meaning ''It's a hot day, isn't it?''This is something deeper than spelling or pronunciation. It goes to the heart of the less-assertive Canadian character. The United States was born when Americans revolted against King George III and asserted their independence. Canada never came to a similar point of self-assertion and that little word ''eh?'' is their refusal even to assert that it's a hot day without inviting somebody else to verify it.One definition of a Candian is ''a North American who refuses to join the revolution''.Another way to tell the difference between a Canadian and an American is to invite the suspected Canuck to lunch and watch him eat. If he's really upper crust, he'll eat like an Englishman, with knife and fork held firmly in his right and left hands. He'll cut with his knife, pack the results on the back of his fork and convey the food to his mouth with the fork still in this left hand.Many an American eats with knife and fork, too, but in a different way. He takes the knife in his right hand and the fork in his left to cut up the food. Then he puts the knife down and takes the fork in the right hand to convey the food to his mouth.A common garden-variety Canadian does the job differently. He doesn't use his knife at all, except for particularly stubborn steaks and other such tough foods. Instead he takes the fork in his right hand and leaves the knife beside his plate. Then he cuts the food with the edge of the fork and feeds himself with the fork held in the same hand.But suppose all these tests are inconclusive. There's one more, rather dangerous, way to tell a Canadian from an American. Just remark to the suspect that Canadians and Americans are so much alike that it's hard to tell one from the other. If the person involved is an American, he'll probably agree.But if he's a Canadian he'll let you know, in no unterms, that you're wrong. And that stubborn sense of difference is one main reason why the two countries, despite similarities, remain separate.(I'm pretty sure I agree with the last statement, but I'm not too sure if I like being called a wimp that doesn't even dare to assert that it's a hot day. (Which it is today.) And I'm tremendously relieved to know that I'm upper crust when it comes to eating. -KO)

|A linguistics professor was lecturing to his English class one day. ''In English,'' he said, ''A double negative forms a positive. In some languages, though, such as Russian, a double negative is still a negative. However, there is no language wherein a double positive can form a negative.''A voice from the back of the room piped up, ''Yeah, right.''

|1. Avoid alliteration. Always.2. Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.3. Employ the vernacular.4. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc. 5. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.6. Remember to never split an infinitive.7. Contractions aren't necessary.8. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.9. One should never generalize.10. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, ''I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.''11. Comparisons are as bad as cliches.12. Don't be redundant; don't use more words than necessary; it's highly superfluous.13. Be more or less specific.14. Understatement is always best.15. One-word sentences? Eliminate.16. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.17. The passive voice is to be avoided.18. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.19. Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.20. Who needs rhetorical questions?21. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.22. Don't never use a double negation.23. capitalize every sentence and remember always end it with point24. Do not put statements in the negative form.25. Verbs have to agree with their subjects.26. Proofread carefully to see if you words out.27. If you reread your work, you can find on rereading a great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing.28. A writer must not shift your point of view.29. And don't start a sentence with a conjunction. (Remember, too, a preposition is a terrible word to end a sentence with.)30. Don't overuse exclamation marks!!31. Place pronouns as close as possible, especially in long sentences, as of 10 or more words, to the irantecedents.32. Writing carefully, dangling participles must be avoided.33. If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.34. Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing metaphors.35. Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.36. Everyone should be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their writing.37. Always pick on the correct idiom.38. The adverb always follows the verb.39. Last but not least, avoid cliches like the plague; They're old hat; seek viable alternatives.