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
Liberty
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After trying the verses, a Frenchman said he’d prefer six
months of hard labour to reading six lines aloud, and we’ll be honest with you,
we struggled with parts of it.
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.
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
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!!!
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You’ve been reading “The Chaos” by Gerard Nolst Trenité,
written nearly 100 years ago in 1922, designed to demonstrate the irregularity
of English spelling and pronunciation.
There’s also a video of the poem being read out should you
want some help on couple of the more unusual words:
{above text and pronunciation video are at:} http://www.thepoke.co.uk/2016/02/17/english-pronunciation-poem/
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Pronunciation note
It may seem odd for the pronunciation of this very word to be an issue; the pronunciation of pronunciation should be evident from its spelling. The vowel in the second syllable is u, said as in the word up. It is not the diphthong ou, as in ouch. However, for some people, the impulse to retain the sound pattern of the familiar verb pronounce is too strong to resist, and we hear this word said as if it were spelled p-r-o-n-o-u-n-c-i-a-t-i-o-n all too frequently. All this is a reminder that the entire subject of “correct” pronunciation is fraught with controversy. Changes from what we heard growing up are often resisted with surprisingly passionate scorn. And yet we know that language is constantly changing, and that many pronunciations once attacked as ignorant are now accepted without question in even the most educated circles. For example, we hear [skiz-uh m] (Show IPA) as well as the older [siz-uh m] /ˈsɪz əm/ for schism, and [fawr-tey] /ˈfɔr teɪ/ as well as the historically correct [fawrt] /fɔrt/ for the sense of forte meaning “something that one excels in” (see Pronunciation note at forte1.). And stress patterns change with new generations: increasingly, [kuh m-pair-uh-buh l] /kəm pɛər ə bəl/ is overtaking [kom-per-uh-buh l] /ˈkɒm pər ə bəl/ for comparable. Language experts seize the opportunity to note and study these changes; language innovation can be fascinating--even exciting. But some deviations from the current norm will not become part of an accepted standard, and as long as the way one speaks remains a marker of one's education, or one's ability to perform well in school or in a prospective job, it is best to avoid misguided pronunciations like [pruh-noun-see-ey-shuh n] /prəˌnaʊn siˈeɪ ʃən/ .
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