Enough to make you tear your hair...

[serai]

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Here's a bit fun for those of you who love the vagaries of our ragtag language...



English Pronunciation
Author Unknown


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, virgin.
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but there.
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 spiky?
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 -
Dough, through, plough, or rough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!




This tongue of ours may be hard to learn, but it sure is fun to play with!

Comments

[samena.livejournal.com]

I jut read this poem aloud. I wonder how many mistakes I made. ;)

Thanks for posting this! It's very entertaining!!

[serai1.livejournal.com]

Heehee! I know. Maddening, isn't it? Maybe I should post a version with phonetic spelling.

You're welcome!

[samena.livejournal.com]

Ague? Melpomene? Victual? Foeffer? *despairs* Fortunately these aren't words you come across a lot. ;D

I'd LOVE to see the phonetic spelling of this poem, but I guess it would take a LOT of work...

[serai1.livejournal.com]

The poem actually tells you how to pronounce those. Look at the line above "ague"; it ends with the words "plague you". Take the "pl-" off that and you have the pronunciation of "ague" - ay-g-you. (The "g" is hard, and the accent is on the first syllable.) "Victual" rhymes with "little", and "Foeffer" with "deafer" (as does "heifer"). "Melpomene", a Greek name, is pronounced mell-poe-me-nee, to rhyme with "many" (accent on the second syllable, poe). The poem is carefully constructed and punctuated to answer a lot of these pronunciation questions.

I think I will work on a phonetic version. It'll give me something to do during down-time at work. I'll let you know when I get it done. :)

[samena.livejournal.com]

You know, I did notice that the rhyme helps you figure out how to pronounce a lot of the words, but I was still daunted a bit, because I had never seen some of these words before and their pronunciations seemed so odd to me. I mean, why does 'victual' rhyme with 'little', and isn't it pronounced more like 'actual'? Not that I'm complaining, mind you. I'm absolutely fascinated by the English language. I even studied English at university for a while. Never finished it though. Maybe I will, one day...

Ehm, what do 'victual', 'ague' and 'foeffer' mean, by the way? ;)

[serai1.livejournal.com]

I would say that "victual" ("an article of food") rhymes with "little" simply because people get sloppy with words. Over time it just evolved into that. It's like "Leicester" being pronounced "lester". Tolkien used the word "victuals", meaning "food" or "meals", in LOTR. The Gaffer says it. But Tolkien went out of his way to spell it "vittles", presumably to highlight the Gaffer's lack of book-learning - he knows how to say it, but wouldn't be able to write it. He did the same thing with "waistcoat", spelling it "weskit" when the Gaffer said it. The pronunciation is the same, but the spelling points out the Gaffer's ignorance of writing.

"Ague" is an old-fashioned word for "malarial fever", not used much anymore.

As for "foeffer", I've googled it, and found that it seems to be a misspelling. The word is a legal term and is actually spelled "feoffer". It means "one who grants a feoffment", which is "a grant of lands as a fee".

[nolyana.livejournal.com]

Oi! Thanks for sharing! :).

[serai1.livejournal.com]

You're welcome. :)

[oxer12.livejournal.com]

Oh, that was fun! Thanks for posting.

And it's really great to see you, btw. :-)

[gentlehobbit.livejournal.com]

I love this... err... poem. I've had it for years and have often used it in class with my more advanced EFL students. It is incredibly difficult for them, but they are fascinated by the simply bizarre system (or mish-mash) of pronunciation!