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  • English spelling is easy right...

    So this little poem won't be a problem at all will it....

    Read it 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;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!!!
    The Copyright Monster has made me tell you that my avatar is courtesy of the wonderful Alice XZ.And you don't want to annoy the Copyright Monster.

  • #2
    I might actually print this out and start with my niece on working through it. It's already turning into a running joke between us that English makes no sense when we're doing her spelling homework.
    You're only delaying the inevitable, you run at your own expense. The repo man gets paid to chase you. ~Argabarga

    Comment


    • #3
      Love that poem. It flummoxed an entire class of trainee teachers last year when I decided to share it with them. I only got it right because I guessed at the pronunciation of the names, and paused quite a few times during it.

      Comment


      • #4
        It's called "The Chaos," by Gerard Nolst Trenité

        Go here to see it and get a spoken version, should you wish to test yourself... I missed three

        I LOVE this poem. Almost as much as "Jabberwocky"

        Kittish - as someone who has studied a little bit of Linguistics ... you're right. English doesn't make much sense!
        Last edited by EricKei; 10-13-2014, 08:42 PM.
        "For a musician, the SNES sound engine is like using Crayola Crayons. Nobuo Uematsu used Crayola Crayons to paint the Sistine Chapel." - Jeremy Jahns (re: "Dancing Mad")
        "The difference between an amateur and a master is that the master has failed way more times." - JoCat
        "Thinking is difficult, therefore let the herd pronounce judgment!" ~ Carl Jung
        "There's burning bridges, and then there's the lake just to fill it with gasoline." - Wiccy, reddit
        "Retail is a cruel master, and could very well be the most educational time of many people's lives, in its own twisted way." - me
        "Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down...tell you she's hurtin' 'fore she keens...makes her a home." - Capt. Malcolm Reynolds, "Serenity" (2005)
        Acts of Gord – Read it, Learn it, Love it!
        "Our psychic powers only work if the customer has a mind to read." - me

        Comment


        • #5
          The only bits I have any trouble with reading it aloud are some of the place names. But, I've always been hyper-aware of use of words. To me, there is nothing 'mere' about semantics.
          You're only delaying the inevitable, you run at your own expense. The repo man gets paid to chase you. ~Argabarga

          Comment


          • #6
            Oh English is fun, after all, it doesn't borrow from other languages, it follows them down dark alleys, knocks them over and goes through their pockets for loose grammar. Seriously though, i read something recently that was fun, words like aisle were spelled that way back in the late 19th century because being French was cool, so spelling words in a French like manner was hip, and aisle isn't the only one. Gotta love our language.
            Seph
            Taur10
            "You're supposed to be the head of covert intelligence. Right now, I'm not seeing a hell of a lot of intelligence. Covert, overt, or otherwise!"-Lochley, B5, A View from the Gallery

            Comment


            • #7
              The wind was rough
              And cold and blough;
              She kept her hands inside her mough.

              It chilled her through,
              Her nose turned blough,
              And still the squall the faster flough.

              And yet although
              There was no snough,
              The weather was a cruel fough.

              It made her cough,
              (Please do not scough);
              She coughed until her hat blew ough.

              Bennet Cerf
              Seshat's self-help guide:
              1. Would you rather be right, or get the result you want?
              2. If you're consistently getting results you don't want, change what you do.
              3. Deal with the situation you have now, however it occurred.
              4. Accept the consequences of your decisions.

              "All I want is a pretty girl, a decent meal, and the right to shoot lightning at fools." - Anders, Dragon Age.

              Comment


              • #8
                For some of my writing, I'm writing a handful of English phrases as heard by someone who doesn't speak it - ie. phonetically. It even *looks* like a foreign language when done like that, even though most of the ordinary letters retain their standard values. I actually do a double-take when I come across a word that ends up being spelled "correctly".

                For example:

                Fø sюm of mдi rдitiŋ, дim rдitiŋ ю handfюl of Iŋlix fræziz az hэd bдi sюmwюn hu dюzn't spik it - дi i fюnetikli. It ivюn lukz lдik ю forюn laŋwij wen dюn lдik ðat, ivюn ðœ mœst of ðю ødinюri letэz ritæn ðe standюd valuz. Дi aktyuюli du ю dюb'l tæk wen дi kюm юkros ю wэd ðat endz юp bi'iŋ speld kюrektli.

                The alphabet I'm using for this has 24 consonants and 12 vowels, and it still doesn't cover some of the more subtle distinctions between sounds (eg. the two 'i's in being / bi'iŋ). And yes, I have redefined my keyboard layout so that I can type all of those strange letters without losing the ability to type plain English (or code, or several other languages).

                Comment


                • #9
                  Cool. I will admit, you don't see a thorn (ð) too often outside of linquistics/eymology-related pages Nifty

                  Another experiment -- which would not require keyboard remapping, is the one talked about in a fairly well-known (Cambridge?) experiment, where it was determined that many people (well, more than not) can usually read words where the innards have been scrambled, as long as the first and last letters are where they should be. As such:

                  Aentohr eniepxnmrt -- wichh wulod not rriueqe kberaoyd rpmeniapg...
                  "For a musician, the SNES sound engine is like using Crayola Crayons. Nobuo Uematsu used Crayola Crayons to paint the Sistine Chapel." - Jeremy Jahns (re: "Dancing Mad")
                  "The difference between an amateur and a master is that the master has failed way more times." - JoCat
                  "Thinking is difficult, therefore let the herd pronounce judgment!" ~ Carl Jung
                  "There's burning bridges, and then there's the lake just to fill it with gasoline." - Wiccy, reddit
                  "Retail is a cruel master, and could very well be the most educational time of many people's lives, in its own twisted way." - me
                  "Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down...tell you she's hurtin' 'fore she keens...makes her a home." - Capt. Malcolm Reynolds, "Serenity" (2005)
                  Acts of Gord – Read it, Learn it, Love it!
                  "Our psychic powers only work if the customer has a mind to read." - me

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Quoth EricKei View Post
                    Cool. I will admit, you don't see a thorn (ð) too often outside of linquistics/eymology-related pages Nifty
                    Actually, that's an 'eth', and corresponds to the 'voiced' version of 'th' (which could more correctly be written 'dh'). I also use the thorn (þ) for the 'unvoiced' version, but it happened not to pop up in that particular passage; I would spell "thistle" as "þis'l".

                    The complete alphabet I use is as follows:

                    k t p g d b
                    l y w þ(th) ð(dh) j
                    h s f q(kh) x(sh) c(ch)
                    r z v ŋ(ng) n m

                    д(ah) a(aa) æ(ay)
                    ø(aw) o œ(oh)
                    ю(uh) u(oo) µ(ew)
                    э(er) e(eh) i(ee)

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      In my defense, I wasn't totally awake when I wrote that
                      "For a musician, the SNES sound engine is like using Crayola Crayons. Nobuo Uematsu used Crayola Crayons to paint the Sistine Chapel." - Jeremy Jahns (re: "Dancing Mad")
                      "The difference between an amateur and a master is that the master has failed way more times." - JoCat
                      "Thinking is difficult, therefore let the herd pronounce judgment!" ~ Carl Jung
                      "There's burning bridges, and then there's the lake just to fill it with gasoline." - Wiccy, reddit
                      "Retail is a cruel master, and could very well be the most educational time of many people's lives, in its own twisted way." - me
                      "Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down...tell you she's hurtin' 'fore she keens...makes her a home." - Capt. Malcolm Reynolds, "Serenity" (2005)
                      Acts of Gord – Read it, Learn it, Love it!
                      "Our psychic powers only work if the customer has a mind to read." - me

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Chromatix, I can see your accent.


                        ... or rather, I can see that your nation's 'neutral' differs from Australia's 'neutral'.
                        Seshat's self-help guide:
                        1. Would you rather be right, or get the result you want?
                        2. If you're consistently getting results you don't want, change what you do.
                        3. Deal with the situation you have now, however it occurred.
                        4. Accept the consequences of your decisions.

                        "All I want is a pretty girl, a decent meal, and the right to shoot lightning at fools." - Anders, Dragon Age.

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Brings to mind an essay I came across in one of the sci-fi magazines years and years back, Mayhem in the Classroom.
                          You're only delaying the inevitable, you run at your own expense. The repo man gets paid to chase you. ~Argabarga

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Mm. Mr Asimov's 'neutral' differs from Australia's as well.


                            Divided by a common language! Now imagine Indian subcontinent phonetics as well .... I find their pronounciations beautiful, but they are distinctly different from Australian/New Zealand, Canadian, and any of the many US. And just look at how many accents there are in the British Isles - and Ireland/Eire.


                            I'm not against the concept of trying to simplify English spelling; but phonetic form is only going to be suitable if we can agree on an accent.
                            Seshat's self-help guide:
                            1. Would you rather be right, or get the result you want?
                            2. If you're consistently getting results you don't want, change what you do.
                            3. Deal with the situation you have now, however it occurred.
                            4. Accept the consequences of your decisions.

                            "All I want is a pretty girl, a decent meal, and the right to shoot lightning at fools." - Anders, Dragon Age.

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              I'm sure everyone can agree on one accent -- their own
                              "For a musician, the SNES sound engine is like using Crayola Crayons. Nobuo Uematsu used Crayola Crayons to paint the Sistine Chapel." - Jeremy Jahns (re: "Dancing Mad")
                              "The difference between an amateur and a master is that the master has failed way more times." - JoCat
                              "Thinking is difficult, therefore let the herd pronounce judgment!" ~ Carl Jung
                              "There's burning bridges, and then there's the lake just to fill it with gasoline." - Wiccy, reddit
                              "Retail is a cruel master, and could very well be the most educational time of many people's lives, in its own twisted way." - me
                              "Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down...tell you she's hurtin' 'fore she keens...makes her a home." - Capt. Malcolm Reynolds, "Serenity" (2005)
                              Acts of Gord – Read it, Learn it, Love it!
                              "Our psychic powers only work if the customer has a mind to read." - me

                              Comment

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