A Frenchman said he’d prefer six months of hard labour to reading six lines aloud

General Discussion
1

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;
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.
Fe0ffer 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!!!

2

Really strange- I'm just listening to Terpsichore on Spotify- I love it -as I wonder round my parterre!

3

Terpsichore and Melpomene - never heard of them and will look them up. Some of the others, well it depends on where your language was formed as to how you pronounce them - I'm thinking northern, southern and western UK accents and then all the colonies with their differing vowel sounds.

4

He 'ad a couple of words with me and I couldn't understand either of them!

5

My first ward ever in 1972 at University College Hospital was what they called a stroke ward. We had somewhere in the region of 40 odd patients who had all suffered a cerebral bleed or clot. The bizarre word scenario used to cause those patients huge frustrations, but early days Bruce. If you keep banging away at that written piece you will be stage ready for Shakespeare by Christmas!

6

I used to use some of this verse with my French students of English in both Kuwait and Warsaw!

7

No idea - its not *my* game!! :-) Nor is maths.... But he obviously cheated anyway!

8

16 holes @$5 per hole = 80, so how did he win $8000?

9

Difficult for many, Carol,...impossible for me, after just getting better from a stroke. I say such bizarre words, spellings and pronunciations. Thanks a lot for spelling help on the internet.

10

That is absolutely brilliant...! never seen or heard it before...am now going to share...thankyou!

11

Il n'y a qu'un pas entre le sublime et la ridicule. Qu'est-ce c'est? Le Pas de Calais.

12

The Christian Way to Call Someone a B*stard

A guy was getting ready to tee off on the first hole when a second golfer approached and asked if he could join him. The first said that he usually played alone, but agreed to the twosome.

They were even after the first few holes. The second guy said, "We're about evenly matched, how about playing for five bucks a hole?" The first guy said that he wasn't much for betting, but agreed to the terms.

The second guy won the remaining sixteen holes with ease.


As they were walking off number eighteen, the second guy was busy counting his $8000. He confessed that he was the pro at a neighboring course and liked to pick on suckers. The first fellow revealed that he was the Parish Priest.

The pro was flustered and apologetic, offering to return the money. The Priest said,
"You won fair and square and I was foolish to bet with you. You keep your winnings."

The pro said, "Is there anything I can do to make it up to you?"


The Priest said, "Well, you could come to Mass on Sunday and make a donation......

And, if you want to bring your mother and father along, I'll marry them.
13

Thanks for that one, Bruce!! I copied it and sent it to my "language partner" who lives a way outside Marseilles. She is off on holiday and I thought it would give her something to think about whilst she is away. But No!! Within 10 minutes she was on Skype asking if I had 10 minutes just to read "the first four lines" with her. Needless to say, we read in its totality - and I recorded a reading which is now on her mp3 player!!

What a funny old language English is!!! And, although I had *heard* of terpsichore, I didn't know what it meant - and certainly had no idea about Melpomene!! I *knew* my education was lacking :-)

14

Easy peasy, but it is cr*p weather here so a bottle of wine probably helped. I'd rather have a full bottle in front of me than a full frontal lobotomy ;-)