I think I'm going to help Gavin start carrying the torch about the absurdity of the English language. I've taught it to my children (by default and educationally) all their lives and never really took a good hard look at it. When it's your own language, you just accept the nuances as 'normal' and teach them as such. You know how to speak and read it, so you don't really care when certain words don't follow the rules. But now that I'm teaching English to non-English speakers, I see our language in a whole new light. I'm trying to walk in their shoes and see the world through their eyes...its a humbling, awesome experience.
I'm also reading a book titled Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls (fantastic by the way!) in which one of the characters also just happens to have a beef with the phonics of English. He felt that we should only spell phonetically, thus eradicating many, if not all of the inconsistencies in our language. He wanted to write a book titled: Ghoti Out Of Water. The 'gh' is pronounced as an 'f' as in 'enough'. The 'o' is pronounced like an 'i' as in 'women'. The 'ti' is pronounced as 'sh' as in 'nation'. I love it!
I rest my case.
