General Chat

Apparently, 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


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.
Fe0ffer 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!!!

You’ve been reading “The Chaos” by Gerard Nolst Trenité, written nearly 100 years ago in 1922, designed to demonstrate the irregularity of English spelling and pronunciation. :-D :-D

Well I started but got a bit bored lol

I will have another go later perhaps. It does show how difficult our language is for others to learn tho

Lizxx

I had to do it in two 'sittings' :-D :-D :-D

:-(

Maggiewinchester - Thanks for posting.

'Words' are my insanity. :-D

Wonder how long it took him to write it. I got two thirds of the way through then my eyes faiiled me but it is really good for distinguishing between sounds. Would be easier if he'd broken it up into verses though. There are a few words I didn't recognize so wasn't sure how to pronounce them. will have to look again later.

Thanks Maggie.......I think! :-D :-D

I've split it up into 'verses' of 6 lines - which seems to work :-D

How to pronounce "lichen"? I always pronounced it to rhyme with kitchen until I heard it pronounce Lye-ken by Prof David Bellamy. And he should know, he's a botanist.

It is certainly one to go back to.

I still think ague should be pronounced to rhyme with plague.

"Never make fun of someone if they mispronounce a word.
It means they learned it by reading" - Anonymous.

Which is a good time to admit when I was at Uni, the lecturer had asked if anyone had read Goethe. (that's pronounced Gurter, or Guuhte) Silence.
Then he wrote Goethe's name on the board.
'Oh', piped up someone, (that would be me) yes I've read Go-ethe, he's fascinating!!
Is that how his name's pronounced?'

Nige - the lecturer (in Education) - thanked me afterwards for not only helping to break down barriers, but giving him a darned good idea for a lecture! :-D

Edit: another word neither my sister nor I can pronounce/say properly is tarpaulin.
We both say 'Tarpole-in'. We blame our mother.
Oh, and I can't say 'folk' without 'voicing' the 'l'. :-\
Causes great hilarity within the family.
The only way I can say it properly is to visualise the word 'faux' and put a 'k' on the end.

There is a street in Bognor which everybody pronounces Glamis, as it is written but the late Queen Mother was born in Glamis (Glarms) Castle after which I think it was named.

A lot of place names here in Norfolk are decided by local dialects, e.g. Wymondham is known as Windham, Happisburgh is Haysboro, Stiffkey is Stewkey, Cley is Cleye ( to rhyme with eye) etc etc

I thought ague rhymed with plague too, Sharron

Lizxx

Quinoa?

..Just foul stuff :-D :-D :-D