>>>Same as "You can't have your cake and eat it too", should more sensibly be "You can't eat your cake and have it too".
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>>Depends on the current meaning of "have". When someone says "here, have a cake", are you supposed to just have it (keep it as a posession) or eat it? Or, what does "I had a cake" mean - "...but I lost it" or "I ate a cake"?
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>I really enjoy your observations about the English language. You not only have a keen eye, you bring a (relative) newcomer's POV. Keep it up!

I'm somewhat disconnected from my website (actually, the one txt file which serves as a staging database for all the odds and evens ends that I gather), but I'm gathering pearls for The Art of Spell and maybe a few others in a new text... and then for manual merge when I get home.

And I'm not surprised that I'm seeing stuff most people don't - being not a born speaker, I had to learn the language as my second, at a time when I was well versed in asking stupid questions :), and many explanations of my teacher's ended in "I know it doesn't make sense, but they do speak like that, so just learn it".

As for the "newcomer" thing, this was some time about 1966 or so :).