Pronunciation

[topogigo]

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.

Continued as answer 1

[topogigo]

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..

Continued as answer 2

[topogigo]

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!!!

[123everton]

Who wrote it and what is it called?
Victual is the only one that's fazed me!
Well I think so anyway, LOL!

[topogigo]

This is where i got it from, it is quite clever, and a lot of work went in to it.

http://bertc.com/truth.htm

[EngTeach]

Excellent. I just found a back to school activity!!! thank you!

[Lie-in King]

Excellent find topogigo - I know someone that will greatly appreciate this - thanks! :-)

[joggerjayne]

That's very good.

[topogigo]

have a look at techy tricks in arts

[Clanad]

IAP is semi-correct (quasi-standard?)as to victual's pronunciation. One source has this note: The modern pronunciation of victual, (vĭt'l), represents an Anglicized pronunciation of the Old French form vitaille, which was borrowed into English in the early 14th century. The modern English spelling reflects the fact that in both French and English the word was sometimes spelled with a c, and later also with a u, under the influence of its Late Latin ancestor victuālia, meaning �provisions.� The word is now occasionally spelled vittle rather than victual, but in either case the pronunciation is (vĭt'l).

Not so surprisingly, the verb form of the word is pronounced as spelled; as in a person who supplies the vittles is a victualler rather than a vitteler.. Ah, the vagaries of the English language (and I'm an American, but let's not go there!)

[topogigo]

Sorry......... i was wandering through a meadow with birds singing and the sun shining and the quiet rustle of the willow trees as their gossamer branches kissed the sparkling waters of a gentle stream, when i was suddenly dragged screaming into a thicket by Mr. Clanad.

[Jugglering]

LOL Tops... no probs here... even the spelling was spot on !

One of the few words I've ever had trouble with spelling was the girl's name Penelope.... I'd never heard of the name, so simply assumed it was pronounced Penny-lope.... now how come everyone else knew it supposed to be Penn-ell-oh-pee ? Oh and how about Hermione..... I thought it was pronounced Her-me-on-ee.... not Her-my-on-knee..

[topogigo]

When i was in the navy there was a frigate called Hermione,
'course i had to refer to it her-mee-own-ee
Their was one called Charybidis, you work that blighter out yourself!

[Narolines]

Sorry, Clanad, but the Licenced Victuallers' Association in the UK is definitely pronounced "Licenced VITTLERS' Association", and an innkeeper is therefore a "vittler", not a "victualler".

[topogigo]

More like a victim with Mr. Clanad defining him.

[Narolines]

And while I think of it - as there is only one spelling of "license" in American English, there wouldn't be the confusion over whether it's "licenced" (in possession of a licence) or "licensed" (entitled by possession of said licence) . Even the LVA themselves don't seem to be too sure, as I have seen it spelt both ways ...........

[topogigo]

Mind you the LVA are probably p1ssed anyway.

[Clanad]

Sorry, Narolines... what was that? I was whisked away to Elysian Fields, surrounded by Warblers and Rose Breasted Grosbeaks singing their evening song... enjoying a babbling brook leaping with joy and sparkling with abandon, rushing to the embrace of the Azure Sea...

[Ice.Maiden]

No prob at all - but then...English is my first language anyway.