VO-BB - 20 YEARS OLD!

Dave · Posted: Wed May 30, 2007 6:47 pm Post subject: English Pronunciation!?!

Found this while surfing today...try to read it cold and survive.

Dave

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!!!
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iladelf · Guest

And I now officially have a headache just trying to read said post!

Fun though.

indymandy · Posted: Wed May 30, 2007 7:12 pm Post subject:

I loved that! I have to toot my own horn and say I did pretty well (though certainly not perfect). It reminded me of some classroom exercises I used to do with my (very) advanced ESL students.

Thanks for sharing it. I'm going to take it to my acting class on Monday for fun warm-up exercises!
Amanda

asnively · Posted: Wed May 30, 2007 8:09 pm Post subject:

I wasn't sure on two pronunciations... and I think one of the words is misspelled. Very fun!
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Lizden · Posted: Wed May 30, 2007 8:41 pm Post subject:

That was GREAT! Laugh

Thanks for finding that!

Liz
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Bruce · Posted: Thu May 31, 2007 6:06 am Post subject:

Take a few Germanic languages, add a dash of various Scandanavian tongues, and generous helpings of French and patois, put it all in a bubbling cauldron for 2,000 years, and you get a crazy stew called English.

And some people call themselves English language "purists". Pure what??

B
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Deirdre · Posted: Thu May 31, 2007 6:30 am Post subject:

To quote again from James D. Nicoll:

The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.
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Lizden · Posted: Thu May 31, 2007 7:54 am Post subject:

THAT quote is hysterical!

L.
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robert jadah · Guest

Thanks, Dave. T'was great fun. I was rolling right along until my forehead met the keyboard at the third-to-last line.

And - in a related development - pronounce this:
GHOTI.

It is, of course, 'fish'.

GH as in laugh. O as in women, and TI as in nation.

Strange language indeed.

Vance Elderkin · Contributor IV Joined: 02 Feb 2007 Posts: 133

And there are other swell ways to spell "fish." For example:

FFESS

(FF as in "buff," E as in the first e in "college," and SS as in "session.")

Dave · Posted: Thu May 31, 2007 1:27 pm Post subject:

Audiogal · Posted: Thu May 31, 2007 6:05 pm Post subject:

Thanks for posting, Dave. That was great!
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JimRon · Posted: Thu May 31, 2007 6:45 pm Post subject:

i'm dizzy. and tongue tied
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CarynClark · Posted: Thu May 31, 2007 7:02 pm Post subject:

WHEW!!

And Robert... that's sooo weird and cool all at the same time! Wouldn't that suck if that was a spelling bee word? Spell "ghoti" and the kid says, "fish" - sorry, wrong!
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Deirdre · Posted: Thu May 31, 2007 7:24 pm Post subject:

How does the word "housewife" fit into the strem it's in, near the end?
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