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

(I'm American, I got bored less than `half-way thru and wandered off. But I did well, I mean, er, I did good )

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!!!

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.

[Edited 9/7/16 13:09pm]

LOL, that's funny. Try to say "rural juror" out loud!

No problem for us from the South Island of New Zealand. We are all descended from English settlers who came here between 1849 and 1880. So the language of the mid Victorian era is still spoken well.

.

Before anyone mentions my typing and grammar skills on the computer, I speak better than I type. Speaking proper English (RP) was a pre requisite here until about 1970.

[Edited 9/7/16 16:02pm]

That's hard.

Adorecream said:

No problem for us from the South Island of New Zealand. We are all descended from English settlers who came here between 1849 and 1880. So the language of the mid Victorian era is still spoken well.

.

Before anyone mentions my typing and grammar skills on the computer, I speak better than I type. Speaking proper English (RP) was a pre requisite here until about 1970.

[Edited 9/7/16 16:02pm]

Tell me more... why don't you film yourself reading that shit, please

Wanted to fall asleep after 4 lines.

214 said:

Adorecream said:

No problem for us from the South Island of New Zealand. We are all descended from English settlers who came here between 1849 and 1880. So the language of the mid Victorian era is still spoken well.

.

Before anyone mentions my typing and grammar skills on the computer, I speak better than I type. Speaking proper English (RP) was a pre requisite here until about 1970.

[Edited 9/7/16 16:02pm]

Tell me more... why don't you film yourself reading that shit, please

No, just take my word for it.

I did very well

Until I came across words I could not spell!

Oh, what the hell,

I won't complain.

Who gives a damn?

I feel no pain.

I have no plans

To thwart your endeavors

To give me pleasure

with untimely measure.

Adorecream said:

214 said:

Tell me more... why don't you film yourself reading that shit, please

No, just take my word for it.

I mean it, to listen the right pronunciation for us, not native english speakers.

NorthC said: