I actually love English for that. It is full of pun and word play opportunities. We do have ambiguous words in Arabic too, but not even as half as much.
I do pronounce "ours and our" as if they are almost "R's and R" sometimes. At work westerners seem to have no problem with similar cases, but Indians and others often go like "what?" I have to speak English with them as I have no choice. "He's gone out side" as in " He has gone out side" (when I was asked about the manager once) really blew up the mind of one of them that day.
And btw, I did the explanation above as a joke. I knew it was clear. I was thinking someone might think "Oh, that's right, the two "lyings" do spell like each other haha".
Actually yes, I think if there's a real practical reason to stop something then there should be a case for that - personally I'm probably a bit biased because I hate halloween (hate dressing up, hate that for 1 day in the year it's fine to knock on stranger's doors and ask for sweets) but I really wouldn't be sad if that went!
April fool's day is, I think less of an issue - but I can see why some would think it's a bad idea.
I heard that if no sweets were given, the "trick" part could get ugly. No experience with it, but I can imagine what a child might do getting mad. Specially if they get the impression that "trick" is a part of it so it's okay to perform a prank on those don't give sweets. Not sure, just my thoughts.
April Fools is probably less of an issue, but it's indeed questionable to some on the theoretical moral side. I just don't like the idea of having a possible encouragement to lie. That could seriously affect the community.
I get pranked about every year on April Fools. The only time I was truly upset was in Iraq. See, when you're in war, you completely lose track of time or date. So one morning, LT. gathers us around and says "Listen up Marines, our mission was a success... Nuclear weapons were found in a Mosque down near [some town]..." and we all started cheering because that meant we were there fighting for a legitimate cause. He then drops the line "April Fools f****rs."
That sucked.
Did he actually call you guys f*****s?
Did you report him
It really does hurt to know that some good news weren't really true.
here. Simply because english is such a stupid language. Those of us who speak it would have known exactly what you meant, but because it's not your native language, you felt the need to explain it. I was trying to explain the concept of ours (yours and mine) to my son a few days go and my wife said 'you should say it 'hours' and I said 'it's not the time of day' and she said 'but you're saying it like 'ares'' at which point I said 'english is so stupid'. 
