About and Around with Words

Just a short piece about words, if I didn't get them out in print, I"d never be rid of them!

Sometimes I get these crazy thoughts about how our language came to be the way it is. For example, who first made up these rules:

The plurals for mouse and louse are mice and lice, but we never say hice or blice for multiples of house and blouse.

And while more than one goose is geese, we never say more than one moose are meese!

Why does more than one hoof become hooves yet roof only turns into roofs?

Then we have the "...ough"words. Can anyone explain these pronunciations?

though = thoh
through = threw
brought= brott
bough = bow (as in cow) cough = coff
enough = enuff

but you do know that while know = no, bow can be pronounced as boh -- for the thing you make with ribbon, or as the ow in ouch for what you make after a performance!

Oh one more ...ough word: SLOUGH

Pronounced like slow, it's a soft muddy ground OR a condition into which a person sinks (despair)

Pronounced slue, it's a marsh or reedy pond

Pronounced sluff, it's what our dead skin cells do daily when they are shed.

If you come across other words of similar illogic, send me a note and when I have a a collection, I'll put them together.

For now, though, I'm through. I've had enough. It's time for me to fluff my comforter made of the feathers sloughed by many geese and take a nap. Not in a treetop, because I know that the bough I recline on would break. I'll just be on the couch. Or is it a sofa?...a divan? Whatever.

9.27.04
new thought: Come home. Why is come pronounced cum and home, hohm?

How does one pronounce Brougham which is used for a type of automobile, which by the way is a misnomer because, let's face it, vehicles are not self-mobile -- a driver is needed!