For all you English majors :-)
 

If you can pronounce correctly every word in this poem, you will be speaking English better than 90% of the native English speakers in the world.

After trying the verses, a Frenchman said he’d prefer six months of hard labour to reading six lines aloud.


Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it’s written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,< br>Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation’s OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.
Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post a nd doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.
Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.
Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
C ompare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.
Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.
Pronunciation (think of Psyche!)
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won’t it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It’s a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.
Finally, which rhymes with enough,
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

That was GREAT, and oh so true. How sad is that ?

Oh my!!! what a difficult language we speak!

This is a killer. I sent a copy to my 10-yr-old granddaughter who is an excellent reader. I told her if she could read this poem aloud she's ready for college.

I must have ADHD. I enjoyed reading it, but fell asleep 2 or 3 times and never did finish. I'll have to go back later and finish.

You lost me at "Dearest....." :icon_wink:

Bill :)

And people wonder why English/American is such a hated language. No rules, no sense and yet many countries require that it be learned. Oh, well, at least it's not Russian!

I could never memorize that poem! Could not even read all of it.

Where is Boomer when you need her?

I got no problems reading it or is that redding it??? Hmmmmmmmmmm

I have an ex-wife who grew up in Cuba and studied Russian in school. Ours is her third language.

One of her favorite comments was: "English are tough!"

....or even "reeding"!

Bill :)

I don't need no stinkin english! :cus:

Sent it to my son who's teaching HS English in Spain.

.

Indeed! Where are Boomer and Tony when you need them.

...Say, didn't they disappear around the same time. Hmmmmmmm. :D

You beat me to it Bill!

English must be such a difficult language to learn. Some of these pronunciations are completely arbitrary.

Hhmmm. What are you suggesting? Boomer and Tony ran away together? :icon_wink:

They kinda had a mutual admiration thing going on..

But I don't wanna feed a rumor.;)



For those new to the forum, when the recent change over happened in ownership, we lost two great posters in the shuffle, they were our resident in house English majors and their banter back and forth and Boomers interesting posts and wonderful humor are greatly missed. I kinda miss being corrected by Tony, too.

(I reread the last two sentences and I THINK I have the punctuation correct, just in case and in HOPES they are still reading this forum)

My late wife (gone now nearly 12 years) WAS an English major. She'd have absolutely loved this exercise. I was a French major, with a definite affinity for the English language.

I haven't yet actually tried to read the script provided by my neighbor l2ridehd, but feel fairly confident that I can pronounce everything "correctly."

Please, remember that many Americans think that the English have no idea how to speak our so-called mutual language, just as many (read "most") English believe that Americans speak a completely, totally different tongue!

SWR
:beer3:

gotta love lucy
 

does anyone remember a very very funny episode of I Love Lucy where Ricky is trying to read a bedtime story to little Ricky and keeps mispronouncing the words? as soon as Lucy corrects him, he gets another word spelled the same way but of course pronounced differently...it was really hysterical...

Boy, am I glad I learned English when I was young. I'd have never picked it up now!

Try reeding or redding it after drinking a bottle of wine!!!!!!:wine::confused::read:

does anyone remember a very very funny episode of I Love Lucy where Ricky is trying to read a bedtime story to little Ricky and keeps mispronouncing the words? as soon as Lucy corrects him, he gets another word spelled the same way but of course pronounced differently...it was really hysterical..


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