......To find this latest email very interesting?

I know that it's not strictly what you asked for granto, but your post reminded of the rules of cricket:

You have two sides, one out in the field and one in.
Each man that’s in the side that’s in goes out, and when he’s out he comes in and the next man goes in until he’s out.
When they are all out, the side that’s out comes in and the side that’s been in goes out and tries to get those coming in, out.
Sometimes you get men still in and not out.
When a man goes out to go in, the men who are out try to get him out, and when he is out he goes in and the next man in goes out and goes in.
There are two men called umpires who stay out all the time and they decide when the men who are in are out.
When both sides have been in and all the men have out, and both sides have been out twice after all the men have been in, including those who are not out, that is the end of the game!

I teach English as a second language: pity me!!

I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, lough and through?
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps?
Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird,
And dead: it's said like bed, not bead -
For goodness sake don't call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt).
A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, broth in brother,
And here is not a match for there
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear,
And then there's dose and rose and lose -
Just look them up - and goose and choose,
And cork and work and card and ward,
And font and front and word and sword,
And do and go and thwart and cart -
Come, come, I've hardly made a start!
A dreadful language? Man alive!
I'd mastered it when I was five!

Is he still in bed?
Yes, he's not up yet.
Oh, I thought he'd come down.
No, he couldn't come down because he's not up.
Well, in that case I'm going up to tell him to get up and come down.

Why does the hare have no hair ?

sounds the same, but OK technically not obeying the rules

I was very chilly when I went to Chile to buy some chilli

The room is so minute, it can be cleaned in a minute.

granto7 Wasn't there a movement some years ago to simplify the English language by cutting out all the long words and concentrating on short ones instead, because so many expressions are made up of several short ones, like your examples. So foreigners would have had to learn, not separate memorable words for each concept, but groups of words combined in an illogical way and often with meanings quite different to what they meant one by one ......

I've never heard any more about that. Wonder why.

And you can sit down and sit up at the same time.
And shut up and pipe down.
And why is it that Americans run for election and we stand?
Is it any wonder that speakers of other languages find English confusing?

So far so good
Now what about the word UP

We
Speak UP
Get UP
Warm UP
Lock UP
and
To be dressed before 11am on Gnet is one thing but to be dressed UP is another
Happy UPPing

The Reading Centre is in Reading

He threw the ball through there
There was a lot of wear where he had been sitting

hgiti - how can this be pronounced 'fish'?

Sorry, you already had invalid and invalid. Whoops.

Your claim to be an invalid was deemed invalid.
You can't make a dog's lead from lead.
In the underwater band the bass played bass guitar.

They were allowed to sing aloud

he had to bow to tie the bow