[etni] Fwd: mother tongue is English

From: ETNI list <etni.list@xxxxxxxxx>
To: Etni <etni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2011 21:15:57 +0200
----- Original Message -----
From: phyllis oded - phylliso@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: mother tongue is English

 If you can correctly pronounce every word in this poem,  you will be
speaking English better than 90% of the native English  speakers in
the world.


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.
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!!!
- B.  Shaw
[etni] Fwd: mother tongue is English

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