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How good is your pronounciation?

(120 Posts)
lucid Mon 14-May-12 10:23:18

A friend emailed this to me....you really need to read it out loud. It made me laugh grin

IF YOU CAN PRONOUNCE CORRECTLY EVERY WORD IN THIS POEM, YOU SPEAK ENGLISH BETTER THAN 98% OF THE WORLD'S ENGLISH SPEAKERS.

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.

absentgrana Mon 14-May-12 10:30:14

The trouble is that if you start laughing, you never get to the end. smile

Lilygran Mon 14-May-12 10:32:48

I like this! Never seen such a comprehensive list before. Thank you, Lucid.

artygran Mon 14-May-12 13:38:17

Good God! When you put it like that, you have to hand it to people from abroad who get to grips with our lovely language? Excellent, Lucid, thanks for that!

soop Mon 14-May-12 14:08:52

flowers *Lucid. Amazing!

grrrranny Mon 14-May-12 15:04:55

How do you pronounce 'plover'? I say something like pluver and the first time I heard plover in England I thought it was a contraction of pullover as it went pl-over. Does that make any sense? I still say pluver.

Elegran Mon 14-May-12 15:14:22

Yes, pluvver, to rhyme with luvver.

grrrranny Mon 14-May-12 15:20:25

So do you think it is a Scottish pronunciation - pluvver?

Anagram Mon 14-May-12 15:21:42

I say pluvver too, and I'm not Scottish or living in Scotland.

grrrranny Mon 14-May-12 15:38:53

So that's not it then. I grew to believe I was wrong (or just Scottish). Does anyone say pl-over then and think pluvver is wrong? No idea why it interests me but it was just such a shock to hear. I think it was to do with a pub in the south called 'The Sociable Plover' and I really believed I was going to 'The Sociable Pullover'!

Anagram Mon 14-May-12 15:44:57

grin

Annobel Mon 14-May-12 16:26:09

I've always understood it to be 'pluvver' and am Scots, though I think I have heard it in wildlife programmes.

Elegran Mon 14-May-12 16:40:37

Does the Sociable Pullover have a snug? Do you all have to squeeze in close together and cosy?

grrrranny Mon 14-May-12 17:05:22

Sociable Pullover maybe has lots of necks and lots of arms with just one space for body.

jeni Mon 14-May-12 17:13:09

I say pl uvver

Bags Mon 14-May-12 17:18:20

pluvver

Check in a dictionary.

Nonu Mon 14-May-12 18:12:25

I also say pluver

nanaej Mon 14-May-12 20:41:26

For the first time this June all 6 year olds will be taking Mr Gove's national test for phonic knowledge ! Hope that they do not have to read that poem!!

The poem helps to show why reading & writing in English is tricky! I think our kids do very well considering there are more exceptions than rules in English! Most other languages are far more phonetic than English!

Mishap Mon 14-May-12 20:54:55

Poem is great and, as others have said, demonstrates what a difficult language to learn English is. We used to have a Polish maths teacher and, when she was demonstrating about right angles, she said that without them the "ceiling would be slopping""

I hate hearing recordings of my voice as I sound a bit like the queen! This was because my Mum insisted on me having elocution lessons because she could not bear for me to pick up the prevailing Essex accent.

Anagram Mon 14-May-12 21:02:23

Having read and enjoyed this thread, I'm really sorry but I just have to point out that it's 'pronunciation' not 'pronounciation', because that's another of those words that presenters etc. get wrong!

I just can't fight my inner pedant....hmm

specki4eyes Mon 14-May-12 22:20:16

I still cringe with private embarrassment when I recall pronouncing 'misled' as "myseld".
I once had a very pretentious client who was reluctant to pronounce 'wood' or 'would' in the normal way, so used to say 'wod'. He thought he was disguising his North Midland accent this way. Listening to him was rather like hearing the tortured vowels used in 'Allo 'Allo!

Anagram Mon 14-May-12 22:33:00

I remember pronouncing 'picturesque' as 'pictureskew' when I was young, because I'd only ever read it, never heard it said! blush

nanaej Mon 14-May-12 22:38:36

My embarrassing moment was saying depot which I said like teapot! I was still at infant school so about 7 and the milk depot was at the end of the road. So upset when my error pointed out to me! blush

Elegran Mon 14-May-12 23:02:08

It was a family joke in our house to pronounce things wrong deliberately (in private) Sometimes we forgot that there were visitors and got some funny looks.

nightowl Mon 14-May-12 23:12:52

My embarrassing moment happened when we were reading Jane Eyre in the second year of grammar school so I would have been about 12. I was reading aloud the passage where Rochester asks Jane to marry him (so already squirming over the passionate dialogue) and I came to the bit where he says: 'little sceptic, you shall be convinced' except that I pronounced it septic, thus completely destroying the romance!! Oh the shame!! blush