Cruel Irony

If I had to sum up the English language in one word I think it would be a toss up between Cruel and Ironic. Maybe i'd petition the use of a second word and say Cruel Irony. It's not enough for English to be the epitomy of Hypocracy, making usage rules for the sake of breaking them - even breaking rules that govern the breaking of rules; and it's not content to torture us with unnatural spellings and pronunciations; no English doesn't have the universal decency to stop at anything less than mockery of the handicapped. I submit to the jurry three examples. Let us begin with the letter "R":

I met a man from Boston the other day. His surname is Dumarri - note the presence of two R's. This is a horrible problem for any Bostonian because they don't use R's. One day some discriminatory Boston official said,

"Cast out the R's! Make them a hiss and a byletter! From henceforth replace the sound made by any R that approaches with that of the letter 'W' or the word 'ah' (which ever sounds better with the surrounding vowels and consonants)." And the dpeople listened and obeyed. Infact they obeyed so well that their style of R-shunning entered the gene pool and became classified as a speech impediment. now this was no crime made by the unjustly isolated R; however, the way in which it retaliated was most cruelly ironic: it placed the banished noise within it's own appelation, punishing the newly impaired and their children and their children's children and so on until the present day.

Mr. Dumarri can neither say nor spell his name aloud and be understood. For example, he may call a restaurant in Utah to make a reservation. The conversation might go like this:

"We'd be glad to hold a place for you sir. May I have your name?"
"Yes, it's Dumahwi"
"I'm sorry, did you say DoomOnMe?"
"No, Dumahwi. Let me spell it to you: D-U-M-A-awe-awe-I. Dumahwi"
"I'm sorry sir. Did you say Dumah'i... D-U-M-A-A-A-I?"
"No no. It's only got one "A" and two ahhws."
"Pardon me, I think there's a problem with the connection. Two whats?"
*Mr. Dumarri sighs* "Aahhwws. AaWwahs! I'm fwom boston and we don't use them... awe as in 'wip' and 'widge.'"
"Excuse me, did you say 'W' as in 'whip' and 'wig?'"

We leave Mr. Dumarri now as he plants his face in the palm of his hand and examine an ugly word: "lisp." Again eglish mocks the verbailly impaired. The test to check for a lisp is to have the candidate say "lisp." If a person can't say it then he's got it, so send him to get some professional help with it. English rubs salt in his wounds as he goes home to tell his wife that he needs to start seeing a "Thpeech Therapitht."

Finally, we close our case with the fear of long words. A fellow with this problem can get along with english decently on any given day - depending on who he's talking to. However, should he ever hear the name of what he suffers it could take him the rest of his life to recover from the jolt he gets from his "hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia!"