English is hard

Anhaga sent me this email the other day, contents as follows:

How do non-natives ever learn all the nuances of English?

There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that word is "UP."

It's easy to understand UP , meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP ?

At a meeting, why does a topic come UP ? Why do we speak UP and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report?

We call UP our friends and we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver, we warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen. We lock UP the house and some guys fix UP the old car.

At other times the little word has real special meaning. People stir up trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses.

To be dressed is one thing but to be dressed UP is special. And this up is confusing:

A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP .

We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night. We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP !

To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP, look the word UP in the dictionary. In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4 of the page and can add UP to about thirty definitions.

If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used. It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don't give UP , you may wind UP with a hundred or more.

When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP .. When the sun comes out we say it is clearing UP. When it rains, it wets UP the earth.

When it doesn't rain for awhile, things dry UP .

One could go on & on, but I'll wrap it UP , for now my time is UP , so ....

Time to shut UP .....!

Oh...one more thing:
What is the first thing you do in the morning & the last thing you do at night?

U - P

Bathroom humor aside, those of us who grew up with English have to appreciate how confusing it must be for those who learned the language through whatever means. I've seen similar emails/postings about the difficulty of English. I'm told by friends who are linguists that, in fact, English is not *the* most difficult language, but even they admit that it is a very specific language. We have a lot of words, many of which have either several meanings or inferences (see above about UP) and many which are so specific that they are used in only the most esoteric circumstance. Show of hands, how many of you know what a 'zeugma' is (not the city North of Antioch) and can demonstrate it in a sentence? My personal favorite zeugmas are in "Have Some Madiera, M'Dear" by The Limeliters. Not that you needed to know that.

Then there are the homophones:

• English is Tough
• Why English is so Hard

Enough, discuss.