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.

[Aelon]

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

[Joey]

Lol...that was fun...I'll have my 8th grader read it tomorrow.

[Qapla]

Didn't have a problem with the pronunciation, just how looooooooooooooooooooooooooooong it was!

[izzydee83]

I flunked out at "Terpsichore." And "Melpomene." And "Fe0?ffer" That's a zero, btw.

[BloomEtta]

I tripped up at Terpsichore. Then Melpomene and clangour. I had to think, did I ever know victual? And is Fe0ffer a REAL word?? 

 

Either way, this was a fun one for me! 

 

[VL4D]

Whoa, that's long. Not complicated. But whoa, that's long.

[Holly]

Loved it!  lol!   It is so absolutely ridiculous, the English language!  None of it makes much sense or is that cents or possibly scents?   hmmmmmmmmm

[SUNRAY]

I heard the ministry school overseer say "pronounciation" a couple of times!..I wonder once we master the English language if we will all be speaking some other language like Hebrew in the Paradise???

[retroHelen]

This just shows up how English is a mongrel language made up from words with their pronunciations from other languages, so the same combination of letters gives different sounds. It reflects an Island that has different immigrants through the centuries who have left their mark with added words. Then the language spread abroad as the English speakers colonized elsewhere and had more words from wherever it went added too.

 

Us up North use more pronunciations influenced by Vikings/Scandnavians Scots and some Celtic, rather than Southern English that has been influenced more by Germanic and French and uses different words and dialect to us Northerners. For all these differences North to south, we manage to understand ourselves.Our grammar is so mixed up as a result, not sticking to rules as it should, that we find learning grammar a torture, so it's been dropped from curriculum in most schools. Therefore, when faced with other more logical languages, we tend to be turned off grammar because we think it's as difficult as ours.

 

 In it's favour, English has so many words for the same things, cribbed from so many places, that we have lots of choice for poetry and literature to give description and colour to a narrative. Therefore, having a Thesaurus of synonyms & Antonyms (similar Words and opposite words) as well as a Dictionary when compiling talks( as well as anything written) is very useful.  It makes what you are compiling more interesting to hear or read.

Edited October 12, 2013 by retroHelen