Quando você quer sair do Windows, não acha estranho ter de clicar no botão "Iniciar"? Então veja este texto, publicado em uma página da Universidade do Texas, sobre as maluquices do idioma em que foi criado esse ambiente operacional. Foi mantido em inglês, pois contém muitas expressões praticamente intraduzíveis:

Subject: This is The English Language

       When people say communication would be so much more
       simple if everyone in the world just spoke English,
       give them a copy of this!

       *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *
       Let's face it -- English is a crazy language.
       There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger;
       neither apple nor pine in pineapple.
       English muffins weren't invented in England
       or French fries in France.

       Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads,
       which aren't sweet, are meat.

       We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes,
       we find that quicksand can work slowly,
       boxing rings are square and a
       guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

       And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing,
       grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham?
       If the plural of tooth is teeth,
       why  isn't the plural of booth beeth?
       One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese?
       One index, 2 indices?

       Doesn't it seem crazy that
       You can make amends but not one amend,
       You comb through annals of history but not a single annal?
       If you have a bunch of odds and ends
       and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?

       If teachers taught, why didn't the preacher praught?
       A vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?
       If you wrote a  letter, perhaps you bote your tongue?

       Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be
       committed to an asylum for the verbally insane.
       In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital?
       Ship by truck and send cargo by ship?
       Have noses that run and feet that smell?
       Park on driveways and drive on parkways?

       How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same,
       while a wise man and wise guy are opposites?
       How can overlook and oversee be opposites,
       while quite a lot and quite a few are alike?
       How can the weather be hot as hell one day and cold as
       hell another.

       Have you noticed that we talk about certain things only
        when they are absent? Have you ever seen a
       horseful carriage or a strapful gown?
       Met a sung hero or experienced requited love?
       Have you ever run into someone who was combobulated,
       gruntled, ruly or piccable? And where  are all those
       people who ARE spring chickens or
       who would ACTUALLY hurt a fly?

       You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in
       which your house can burn up as it burns down,
       in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which an
       alarm clock goes off by going on.

       English was invented by people, not computers, and it
       reflects the creativity of the human race (which, of course,
       isn't a race at all).

       That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible,
       but when the lights are out, they are invisible. And why,
       when I wind up my watch, I start it, but when I wind up
       this essay, I end it.