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. Try them yourself.
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,
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 and 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.
Compare 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!!!
Read more ...
