Beautiful and Terrible Words

Do you ever look at a word for too long, and just think it is the weirdest thing in the world? That is just looks wrong? It might be spelt correctly, just a perfectly normal word in a normal sentence or phrase, but the longer you stare at it, the stranger and more ridiculous it seems? This happened to me today.

It was the word ‘among’. It can be pronounced like ‘amung’ but spelt like the word ‘long’. It is so weird. Seriously, just look at it.

AMONG

AMONG

AMONG

AMONG

It is so messed up right? No? Yes? Am I just officially going crazy? Sounds about right to me…I swear that I am not. I am in perfectly good health and absolutely perfectly sane (at the moment at least) but I just cannot get my head around how wrong this word feels to me right now.

But its not even the weirdest word in the English Language, because, lets face it, it is the weirdest language in the world and our grammar just let’s the weirdest things be grammatically correct.

Take this sentence for example. (taken from tumblr, where all the in’s and out’s of the English language is discussed).

Is that not the best and most wonderful sentence in the whole word? How can that seriously make sense, it is a wonderful and beautiful thing.

Did you know that that sentence is cool, but so is this one? Go on, read it again.

Can you believe that saying that that is actually correct? And that ‘that that’ thing is also correct. That is repeating the same word THREE TIMES!! Am I serious? Yes, the fact that that ‘that that’ thing is real is just another reason for my love/hate relationship with the English language. (FOUR TIMES)

So, I’m getting lost again. Let’s go back to ‘among’ shall we?

Among. Is it starting to look weird yet? If it is not, then clearly, I am most definitely going crazy. I mean, don't even get me started on the word ‘amongst’, like seriously? Who came up with these? Who decided that these letters in this combination and order made a perfectly good word that was totally acceptable.