The poem discusses the complexities of English pronunciation and provides examples of words that are commonly mispronounced or confused, such as corps and corpse, wound and wound. It notes inconsistencies like dough and cough rhyming with enough, while through does not. The poem encourages studying pronunciation to properly distinguish between tricky word pairs like blood and flood or aisle and isle.
The poem discusses the complexities of English pronunciation and provides examples of words that are commonly mispronounced or confused, such as corps and corpse, wound and wound. It notes inconsistencies like dough and cough rhyming with enough, while through does not. The poem encourages studying pronunciation to properly distinguish between tricky word pairs like blood and flood or aisle and isle.
The poem discusses the complexities of English pronunciation and provides examples of words that are commonly mispronounced or confused, such as corps and corpse, wound and wound. It notes inconsistencies like dough and cough rhyming with enough, while through does not. The poem encourages studying pronunciation to properly distinguish between tricky word pairs like blood and flood or aisle and isle.
The poem discusses the complexities of English pronunciation and provides examples of words that are commonly mispronounced or confused, such as corps and corpse, wound and wound. It notes inconsistencies like dough and cough rhyming with enough, while through does not. The poem encourages studying pronunciation to properly distinguish between tricky word pairs like blood and flood or aisle and isle.
English is tough stuff And your pronunciation's OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Dearest creature in creation, Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve, Study English pronunciation. Friend and fiend, alive and live. I will teach you in my verse Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and Ivy, privy, famous; clamour worse. And enamour rhyme with hammer. I will keep you, Suzy, busy, River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb, Make your head with heat grow dizzy. Doll and roll and some and home. Tear in eye, your dress will tear. Stranger does not rhyme with anger, So shall I! Oh hear my prayer. Neither does devour with clangour. Souls but foul, haunt but aunt, Just compare heart, beard, and heard, Font, front, wont, want, grand, and Dies and diet, lord and word, grant, Sword and sward, retain and Britain. Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger, (Mind the latter, how it's written.) And then singer, ginger, linger, Now I surely will not plague you Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and With such words as plaque and ague. gauge, But be careful how you speak: Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age. Say break and steak, but bleak and streak; Query does not rhyme with very, Cloven, oven, how and low, Nor does fury sound like bury. Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe. Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth. Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath. Hear me say, devoid of trickery, Though the differences seem little, Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore, We say actual but victual. Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles, Refer does not rhyme with deafer. Exiles, similes, and reviles; Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer. Scholar, vicar, and cigar, Mint, pint, senate and sedate; Solar, mica, war and far; Dull, bull, and George ate late. One, anemone, Balmoral, Scenic, Arabic, Pacific, Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel; Science, conscience, scientific. Gertrude, German, wind and mind, Scene, Melpomene, mankind. Liberty, library, heave and heaven, Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven. Billet does not rhyme with ballet, We say hallowed, but allowed, Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet. People, leopard, towed, but vowed. Blood and flood are not like food, Mark the differences, moreover, Nor is mould like should and would. Between mover, cover, clover; Viscous, viscount, load and broad, Leeches, breeches, wise, precise, Toward, to forward, to reward. Chalice, but police and lice; Camel, constable, unstable, Islington and Isle of Wight, Principle, disciple, label. Housewife, verdict and indict.
Petal, panel, and canal, Finally, which rhymes with enough --
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal. Though, through, plough, or dough, or Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair, cough? Senator, spectator, mayor. Hiccough has the sound of cup. Tour, but our and succour, four. My advice is to give up!!! 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,