The intricacies of the English language
Apr. 9th, 2006 02:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
doranwenHave you seen this site yet?
On a related note (this isn't in the above site):
The Phonetic Labyrinth
Dearest creature in creation
Studying English pronounciation,
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse.
I will keep you, Susy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy;
Tear in eye, your dress you'll tear.
So shall I! Oh, hear my prayer.
Pray, console your loving poet,
Make my coat look new, dear, sew it!
Just compare heart, beard and heard,
Dies, diet, lord and word,
Sword, sward, retain, and Britain,
(Mind the latter, how it's written).
Made has not the sound of bade;
Say - said; pay - paid; laid, but plaid.
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as vague and and ague,
But be careful how you speak,
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak,
Previous, precious, fuschia, via,
Pipe, snipe, recipe and choir,
Cloven, oven; how and low;
Script, receipt, shoe, poem, toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, reviles;
Wholly, holly, signal, signing;
Thames, examining, combining;
Scholar, vicar and cigar,
Solar mica, war and far.
From desire desirable, admirable from admire.
Lumber, plumber, bier and briar,
Chatham, brougham, renown, but known
From knowledge; done, but gone and tone;
One, anemone; Balmoral;
Kichen, lichen; laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German; wind and mind;
Scene, Melpomene, mankind;
Tortoise, turquoise, chamois-leather;
Reading, reading, heathen, heather;
This phonetic labyrinth
Gives moss, gross, brook, brooch, ninth and plinth.
Billet doesn't sound like ballet;
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet;
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should or would.
...
Your pronounciation is okay
When you say correctly croquet;
Rounded, wounded, live and grieve;
Friend and fiend; alive and sleeve;
Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
...
Finally, what rhymes with tough,
Though, through, plough or cough? Enough!
Hiccough has the sound of cup --
My advice is: Give it up!
Supposedly the person who posted this was in an EFL Honors class where they had to pass it around if they made a mistake--it went around 1.5 times with a class of 20 students before it finished. (g)
On a related note (this isn't in the above site):
The Phonetic Labyrinth
Dearest creature in creation
Studying English pronounciation,
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse.
I will keep you, Susy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy;
Tear in eye, your dress you'll tear.
So shall I! Oh, hear my prayer.
Pray, console your loving poet,
Make my coat look new, dear, sew it!
Just compare heart, beard and heard,
Dies, diet, lord and word,
Sword, sward, retain, and Britain,
(Mind the latter, how it's written).
Made has not the sound of bade;
Say - said; pay - paid; laid, but plaid.
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as vague and and ague,
But be careful how you speak,
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak,
Previous, precious, fuschia, via,
Pipe, snipe, recipe and choir,
Cloven, oven; how and low;
Script, receipt, shoe, poem, toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, reviles;
Wholly, holly, signal, signing;
Thames, examining, combining;
Scholar, vicar and cigar,
Solar mica, war and far.
From desire desirable, admirable from admire.
Lumber, plumber, bier and briar,
Chatham, brougham, renown, but known
From knowledge; done, but gone and tone;
One, anemone; Balmoral;
Kichen, lichen; laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German; wind and mind;
Scene, Melpomene, mankind;
Tortoise, turquoise, chamois-leather;
Reading, reading, heathen, heather;
This phonetic labyrinth
Gives moss, gross, brook, brooch, ninth and plinth.
Billet doesn't sound like ballet;
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet;
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should or would.
...
Your pronounciation is okay
When you say correctly croquet;
Rounded, wounded, live and grieve;
Friend and fiend; alive and sleeve;
Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
...
Finally, what rhymes with tough,
Though, through, plough or cough? Enough!
Hiccough has the sound of cup --
My advice is: Give it up!
Supposedly the person who posted this was in an EFL Honors class where they had to pass it around if they made a mistake--it went around 1.5 times with a class of 20 students before it finished. (g)
