>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!!! > > >