Images thread XX

[robkelk]

If by "anonymous" one means "Penny Pictorial Magazine"... Also, "Why English Is Hard to Learn" is a particularly odd spelling of the title "Queer English".

And not only is that version incomplete (it's missing three couplets including the coda), there's a typo in it that changes the meaning.

Here's the entire work, as quoted in page 3 of The Somerset reporter [sic] (Skowhegan, Me.), April 04, 1901:

QUEER ENGLISH.

---

We begin with a box, and the plural is boxes,
But the plural of ox should be oxen, not oxes.
Then one fowl Is goose, but two are called geese,
Yet the plural of mouse should never be meese.
You may find a lone mouse or a whole nest of mice.
But the plural of house is houses, not hice.
If the plural of man is always called men,
Why shouldn’t the plural of pan be called pen?
The cow in the plural may be cows or kine,
But the plural of vow is vows, not vine.
And if 1 speak of a foot, and you show me your feet,
And I give you a boot, would a pair be called beet?
If one is a tooth and a whole lot are teeth.
Why shouldn't the plural of booth be called beeth?
If the singular’s this and the plural is these,
Should the plural of kiss be nicknamed keese?
Then one may be that, and three would be those,
Yet hat in a plural would never be hose.
We speak of a brother and also of brethren,
But, though we say mother, we never say methren.
Then masculine pronouns are he, his and him,
But imagine the feminine—she, shis and shim!
So the English, I think, you all will agree.
Is the most wonderful language you ever did see.
—Penny Pictorial Magazine.

It took me less than five minutes to find this in the Library of Congress' online archives.