Old with questions

I see we have a lot of new folks while I have been dashing about Bens friends land with lots of questions and our members are stepping forward to answer them. That's great. I'm old and while resigned to my disease despite new things constantly happening I have some questions that have bothered me for years and was wondering of some of you can help me out?

Why isn't phonetic spelled the way it sounds?

Why are there interstate highways in Hawaii?

Why don't sheep shrink when it rains?

If nothing sticks to Teflon, how do they make it stick to the pan?

Why do they put braille dots on the drive up ATM?

Why are their flotation devices under the seat of airplanes and not parachutes?

Have you ever imagined a world without hypothetical situations?

If you are driving the speed of light, what happens when you turn on your headlights?

Why do we drive on parkways, and park on driveways?

Why when you transport by car is it a shipment but when by ship cargo?

Why are they called apartments when they are all stuck together?

If fire fighters fight fire, crime fighters fight crime, what do freedom fighters fight?

But the big one is. If buttered toast lands butter side down and a cat always lands on its feet, what would happen if you tied a piece of buttered toast to the back of a cat and dropped it?

Have a great weekend................... TJ

TJ, we can always count on you to keep us on our toes.

S

OMG! This is my 14 yr old daughter's brain. Too funny!

I got interested in the first question and looked it up. The Greeks had 2 sounds (represented by Greek letters) the "ph" sound and "p" as in pi. Later, in Latin, the Romans used "ph" and "p" to represent those sounds in Roman letters. Phonetics comes from the Latin word "phone" meaning "sound". It's a method of reading that assigns a letter or group of letters for each sound in a language. I forget where the "f" came from, but that sound either comes from a language that isn't Latin based or it's a "ph" sound that's become "friticated". Now I'm wondering if there's a tiny difference in the sound of "ph" and "f". Linguistics is a field that studies all these little bits.

Poor cat! :) Thanks, TJ