English is Tough Stuff
With my line of work, knowing what to say and how to say things in the English language is essential. Dealing with English-speaking clients every day is a bit taxing on the nerves especially if English is not your first language. I do know how to pronounce words, I always watch my pronunciation, but there are always times when I slip.
Now how about you going through the following poem? How far can you go without stumbling? 
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!
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8 Responses to “English is Tough Stuff”
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Hi, i know you really like some love songs. Do you like the song “Love we lead you back” by Taylor Dane?
I used to work as a professional linguist. I can speak Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian. Along with a little Macedonian, Bulgarian, Polish, Russian etc. Basically anything slavic based. I have no idea how hard it must be to learn English as a second language. Our grammar rules and pronunciation and spelling just do not jive.
Yup, I like some but not those really icky stuff. I actually have an eclectic taste in music but I have to have my dose of love songs. I am currently listening to “Love will lead you back” and I do like it, it brings me back to my highschool days…
@Trey
Amen to that. I wish I could speak more than two languages but somehow did not get to it. I do know my English but sometimes, somehow I tend to slip in the most embarrassing way…
holy crap my head hurts after that poem! lol cool video!
Hi April,
I even had a migraine headache after writing this post! lol
Too much for my little head to take in, oh the confusion!
The little birdie video worked though…
Wow that has to be the longest poeam that i have ever read, no lie. but now that i have read it i dont remember the beging it really dosen’t go along with anything and i’m not sure if i really like it, I will agree with Tim, and April and Jamie, I would try and make it shorter or even maybe do somthing with it.!<3 I’m not trying to act mean or anything but I think it is better that someone that you dont know and have never seen befor is telling you this insted of one of your close friends.
Hi Lindsey,
I appreciate the comment but I did not write that poem, merely shared it for fun. It was actually written by Gerard Nolst Trenité and is titled “The Chaos”, for more information about this poem check out this site: The Chaos