>>Or are you still talking in context of wifes. I know they can read our mind. I just have never figured out how they do it????
>
>Wifes??? Wives!!! :-)))

This is from my website, but I just discovered it has an unreadable combination of colors (at least that's how it looks in Netscape), so I'm copying the text here:


While learning English, I was amazed with the amount of cases where history had beat logic. You know, the regularly irregular stuff, like irregular verbs, irregular plurals, hundred ways to pronounce gh and all sorts of misfortune that happen to the poor H.

The one proposition I have is to do away with the exceptions, but in a different manner. All the previous attempts were aimed toward elimination of the exceptions (i.e. you shouldn't say "sat", you should say "sitted"), which never had a chance to take root.

I'm proposing something completely different: add new rules, so yesterday's exceptions would become regular cases. If there are rules on so many incredible things (which continue to amaze anyone trying to learn this puzzling language), a few more won't hurt. We may even save a few nice exceptions from becoming extinct.

Let's take women for example. The 'o' in this form of plural is pronounced as short 'i', like in 'bit'. Well, how many other -man/-men pairs have this? None? So this is the sole exception? No, I say, make it a rule. Try to pronounce "postmen" as "pistmin", "policemen" like "pilicemin" - you will find the rest, make it your homework.

Another one, which is actually two. What's the plural of 'mouse' and 'louse'? 'Mice' and 'lice', right? Two don't make a rule yet, but... let's try:

mouse - mice
louse - lice
spouse - spice
nouse - nice
douse - dice
house - hice
twouse - twice
polouse - police (OK, this is a bit stretched)
rouse - rice
ouse - ice