The funny thing about English — funny in an infuriating way, for non-native speakers — is its spelling irregularities.
A friend in Poland once offered me “duff nuts.” Logical enough: -ough is often pronounced “uff,” as in “enough.”
K asked me the other day if I knew what cat soup was. I suddenly became very protective of our own cat, wondering what kind of Third-World recipe she had in mind. Turned out, we have cat soup in our fridge; it’s just spelled a little differently.
We have so many mysterious words in our langauge that are only understood by being immersed into our culture – especially those words that are “made-up” marketing names – (like “ketchup”). The resorting to “made-up” names like “Embarq” come about as a result exhaustion of otherwise “normal” words in the English language by marketeers over the years.
That “Anonymous” comment was by me…Papa
LOL. dough nuts, indeed :D