I noticed recently that a number of folks misuse the word “lose” by confusing it with “loose”. It occurred to me that English is really a very arbitrary language as evidenced by these two words. While “lose” is to misplace something, “loose” is not tied up. Yet the spelling is extremely arbitrary. It is true that “moose”, “goose” and “noose” are spelled the same as “loose”, but what about “deuce” or “juice” or “ruse” or “use”?
And to make matters worse, words that sound like “lose” are spelled “booze” or “dues” or “fuse” or “glues” or “hues” or “Jews” or “muse” or “news” or “pews” or “rues” or “sues” or “shoes” or “twos” or “use” (yes, that same word pronounced differently), or “views” or “whose” or “who’s” or “zoos”.
There are so many examples of strange spellings that it would take an English Major to catalogue them all. Like “bait” and “wait” as opposed to “date” and “fate” and “gate” and “hate” and “late”, etc. How about “threw” and “through”? Or “bow” (a ribbon) and “bow”(to genuflect)? Or “though” and “bough”? Or “bought”, “thought” and “caught”?
So if anyone tells you that French or German or even Cantonese or Japanese are difficult to learn, just remember that the English language is the toughest (tuffest?) of all.
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