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, 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!!!
English Pronunciation by G. Nolst Trenité
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Sorry Alejandro Esperanto is dead in the water.
Its main problem is that it’s an artificial language and thus has no “native” speakers. It is only ever a second language and so learning it has to be a deliberate effort for ALL speakers – apart from die-hard fanatics nobody uses it conversationally, and very few people use it fluently.
For better or worse, English has become the internatioinal language of communciation, partly because of American dominance of popiular media, but also because it’s the language of computing and programming.
We’re very nearly at a position where regardless of field of expertise, a lack of fairly advanced English comprehension will limit professional horizons. It’s the language of science, of engineering, of architecture, of most things. Arguably French and Italian are more dominant in cooking and design, German and French in philosdophy and metaphysics, but almost all international technical journals are published in English.
More than probably any other language, English has an amazing ability to assimilate words and concepts from other langauges without sounding “foreign” (being an inherently mongrel language and with no body tryiung to maintain its “purity”). It also has the ability unlike most other languages of being adequately comprehensible without the benefit of anything approaching correct grammar – or even, dare I say it – spelling. And certainly, as prioved by different readings of this poem, with all kinds of different pronunications!
Despite your statement that your English was limited, you put your point across well and correctly, thus proving my point
How can English always be a second language if some people speak nothing else?
Errr… I was talking about Esperanto being exclusively a second langauge, Megan. (Clue in the first sentence) …
This is stupid. Way too easy. If you screw this up, even though it is poorly written, yes you are a an idiot.
Errr… Richard is quite the pretentious dick. (Clue being his attitude)…
“Yes you are a an idiot.” Thank you Kai Wolter…
@robert
actually, some people have esperanto as their first language.
see, some fanatics have children.
and teach their children esperanto.
so yeah.
This is England’s revenge for being conquered so often as the language was taking shape. If you can figure out from which conquering nation the word originated, then the pronunciation is easy.