English is Tough Stuff

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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 you 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 and plaque and argue.
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 or 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 very 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.

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
Does 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 loose your wits,
Writing groats and
saying grits?
It's a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed,
solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wright,
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!!

Author unknown