The time we went to Disneyland Paris

Once, when I was younger, my family and I when on holiday to Disneyland Paris. We stayed in the attached hotel and had an amazing time.

We spend days running around the park, going on all the rides ten times each. We loved it!

To ensure lasting memories of this fabulous holiday, we took loads of photos. Photos of us with Timon from Lion King, with Mickey Mouse. Photos of us in the cool hotel room. Photos of us about to go on scary rides. It was all so exciting!

The day we were leaving, we had an hour or so before we had to be on the coach and my mum went off somewhere to get something. We took a few last photos of the room and waited for her to come back.

This is what was happening in the meantime. As my mum was coming back to the room she was in the hotel lift, chatting to some people. They pressed the button for the floor they needed and my mum pressed her button. As they were all chatting, the lift stopped and they all got out and walked off down the corridor. They went to their room and my mum came to the room we were sharing and knocked on the door. And knocked! AND KNOCKED! She started shouting our names loudly. Panicking.

No-one was answering the door. There was a cleaner nearby and my mum ran over, frantic, and asked her if she could open the door to her room. The cleaner obliged and opened the door and my mum walked into the room….

The furniture was in slightly different places…. There were no suitcases packed and ready to go…. There was some stuff here but not anything that she recognised…..

It dawned slowly. She was on the wrong floor…. We were a few floors up from the people my mum had chatted to in the lift but in the fun of the conversation, she had left the lift with them and gone to the place where our room was located on the other floor. She was now in someone else’s room.

As she slowly exited and walked off down the corridor, the cleaner must have been a bit confused….

By this time, we were getting confused about where she was and worried about missing the coach. Eventually, we got there in time and took a few goodbye snaps of the park from the coach window. So that was the first stupidity…. The second is coming up….

When we got home later that day, we couldn’t wait to get the photos processed and show everyone what a fabulous holiday we had been on. We were intrigued, though, as we had put a 24 picture film in but it had kept letting us take more and more photos. It must have been a 36 film, we thought.

Then we opened the camera…. To take out the roll of film…. And there was no roll of film in it…. Never had been… We hadn’t taken a single photo the whole holiday….. Whoops….

The Strange English Language

The following is a guest blog from RuthJ at caderyan.com and was submitted to me via myblogguest.com. Enjoy!

 

The English language is a strange little thing. It contains the most words out of any other language, and though it is widely spoken throughout the world, it is actually one of the most difficult languages to learn.

Most other languages have rules associated with why the language is the way it is. Sentences are laid out to make sense and phonetics are easier to dissect. In English, there is no rhyme or reason to the way certain things are spelled or pronounced, and some of the words we use today don’t make sense as to why.

Languages were invented, which leaves it susceptible to error and confusion, and the English language is no exception. If we could go back in time when the English language was being created, we would have plenty of questions.

Did you ever notice that certain words would make more sense if used correctly with its counterparts? For example:

1. Why do we drive on parkways, yet park on driveways?

2. Why do we use garment bags to pack suits, yet we use suitcases to pack garments?

3. How come we play at a recital, yet we recite a play?

4. How come when we move something via a ship it’s called cargo, yet when we move something by car it’s called a shipment?

5. Why do we call people who ride bikes cyclists, but people who ride motorcycles bikers?

For the English language to make perfect sense, you would think that we would drive on driveways and park on parkways and that we would call those who ride bikes bikers and those who rode motorcycles cyclists. Instead, we do things backwards.

Then there are those items that involve numbers that simply don’t make sense. For example:

1. Why is it called a pair of pants when you only get one?

2. Why is first-degree murder worse than third-degree murder, but first-degree burns are less serious than third-degree burns?

3. Why do we call it a television set if we only get one?

We also have words that follow one rule but not for others. For example:

1. How come the day breaks but never falls, yet night falls but never breaks?

2. How come a king rules a kingdom, but a queen doesn’t rule a queendom?

And then there are just certain questions we wish we had answers to, including:

1. Why does the word lisp have an s in it? Was it some type of cruel joke?

2. How come there is no synonym for the word synonym?

3. Why are deer and moose the same for both singular and plural versions?

4. What was the purpose of spelling read and read or lead and lead the same but making them have two different phonetics?

5. How come you can turn a light on, off or out, but you can’t turn it in?

6. How can you be head over heels? Aren’t you already head over heels? Shouldn’t it be heels over head?

7. Why can -ough be pronounced seven different ways?

Unfortunately we may never know the answer to some of these questions, and the English language will continue to be a mystery to everyone.

 

Robert Hunt is a writer and linguist. He has studied the forms and details of many different languages. Robert has recently enrolled in Accent Pros accent classes to learn how to pronounce words with different accents.