>Once you've learned to correctly pronounce every word in the
>following
>poem, you will be speaking English better than 90% of the native
>English
>speakers in the world.
>
>If you find it tough going, do not despair, you are not alone:
>Multi-national personnel at North Atlantic Treaty Organization
>headquarters
>near Paris found English to be an easy language ... until they
>tried to
>pronounce it.  To help them discard an array of accents, the
>verses below
>were devised.  After trying them, a Frenchman said he'd prefer
>six months
>at hard labor to reading six lines aloud. Try them yourself.
>
>English is Tough Stuff
>
>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;
>loven, 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!!!
>
>
>