A Plethora of Pronunciations
Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2012 3:38 pm
A Linguist friend who works with 'English as Second language speakers' sent this to me the other day, so I thought I'd share it here. I could see right away the Frenchman's frustration!
Sardith
ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION
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.
(After trying the verses, a Frenchman said he’d prefer six months of hard labour to reading six lines aloud.)
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;
(to read the rest, follow the link: http://www.thepoke.co.uk/2011/12/23/eng ... unciation/ )
Sardith
ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION
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.
(After trying the verses, a Frenchman said he’d prefer six months of hard labour to reading six lines aloud.)
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;
(to read the rest, follow the link: http://www.thepoke.co.uk/2011/12/23/eng ... unciation/ )