100: Language Problems

You will know from my past musings that, at times, I have problems with the English language.

Of course, in my case, this is made more difficult since neither of my human beans has particularly good diction.

Let me give you an example.

They (the beans) were discussing music the other day and talking about composers - ‘classical’ I think the term is.  The conversation moved on (as conversations tend to do) and they started talking about rubbish - not talking rubbish but talking about rubbish. Then I heard TOWTLH talk about decomposing.  In my half asleep state, I assumed they were still talking about music, so I wondered how composers unwrote their music.

When I worked out that they were talking about rubbish decomposing (in landfill), I realised the error of my thinking but then got sidetracked into similar - I think the term is - puns or plays on  words.

Again, most of you will know I’m on a diet. (God, I know I do.)

Well, for John Hornby’s benefit (John is a neighbour and a musician of sorts) I offer the comment that I am currently augmented but after the diet I will be diminished. (Boom!Boom! as my cousin Basil would say.)

I then started thinking why does English use the same word or words that sound the same for different meanings - there are presumably enough combinations of letters left to provide new words.  It must be hard for people who don’t see the words written down to know whether the speaker means ‘bough’ or ‘bow’ (as in  bow wow) but at least the sound does enable one to spot the difference between ‘bow’ (as in bow wow) and ‘bow’ as in  the thing kids might have in their hair.

Could someone please rationalise the English language.  We dogs demand it!