Phoebe and Her Unicorn by Dana Simpson for July 26, 2016

Don’t get me started on gooses and meese.

if “three times” is called as “thrice”, wouldn’t “four times” be something like “quadrice”?

Literature is more complicated than it has to be. I still remember when I first learn the plural of child. But, I have to disagree on Phoebe about not learning anything useful on the summer. You can learn a lot with the correct activities and sources… as long as you avoid as many adults as possible.

Just wait until you’re struck with a case of hiccoughter.

Maybe Phoebe should learn this little poem.

I take it you already know Of tough and bough and cough and dough? Others may stumble, but not you On hiccough, thorough, slough, and through. Well don’t! And now you wish, perhaps, To learn of less familiar traps. Beware of heard, a dreadful word That looks like beard but 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 as in mother Nor both as in bother, nor broth as 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 word and sword And do and go, then thwart and cart, Come, come! I’ve hardly made a start. A dreadful Language? Why man alive! I learned to talk it when I was five

Summer break is for remembering how to let go.

Because English is one messed up mongrel of a language, that’s why.

Agreed Phoebe.

A bad hair day???

I had a cousin who froke out about all these linguistic oddities.

For the curious: “Laughter” is the original noun form of the verb “laugh”, and originally has a hard ‘gh’, sounding like the ‘ch’ in Sottish ‘loch’. /loch-ter/

“Cough”, on the other paw, is onomatopoeia: That’s the word because ‘cough’ sounds like a cough, while ‘laugh’ does not sound like laughter. (It sounded even more like a cough with the original hard ‘gh’. /coch/)