ENGLISH IS TOUGH STUFF (a comical verse journey into the mazes of English phonetics)

English is Tough Stuff

---

Several years ago a student, Ms. E. Wang, sent me the following verse, showing how odd English phonetics are. No wonder people like George Bernard Shaw wanted to reform English orthography! I corrected several errors I found in the original post (the author is given as G. Nolst Trenite, with an accent acute over the final e). My original comments are affixed below.*

---

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 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.
Nob, Job, 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!

---

*Students, I found that verse on a website [no longer active] and solved the problem of the faux (false) rhyme on sleeve/live. The correct word, in the version I found, is not "sleeve" but "sieve" (pronounced "sive," to rhyme with "live"). Moreover, it clashes more effectively with the previous word in the line, "grieve" (greeve). So change "sleeve" to "sieve" in your printout. There's another, probably unnoticed problem in the verse, which I've fixed by reversing the two words, "Job, nob." The problem is typography. By "Job" the writer intended not one's work (with a small "j") but the biblical book of Job (capitalized and pronounced "Jobe" with a long "o" to clash with "nob" pronounced with a short "o" like "knob"). But by placing "Job" first, the word is not marked as a proper noun (with the long "o") but, by default, as a common noun instead (with the short "o"). By simply reversing word order, "Job" will stand out as a proper noun: "Nob, Job, " instead of "Job, nob," where the marked capital is lost by occuring first in the line. However, Foeffer is still a problem. There is no such word listed in any dictionary. I surmise the writer meant "Feoffer" instead of "Foeffer." "Feoffer" is a real word, meaning someone who gives land (hence "fief"). I would replace "Foeffer" with "foetid" (alternate spelling of "fetid" ["stinking"; pronounced "feetid"] to clash just as well with "does" and yet being a listed [real] word. Finally "George ate late" still doesn't make sense in marking a sound issue. True "George" shows that the sound "jorge" is spelled oddly; but where does "ate late" come in? I would write instead "George gorged late" for a more effective line. First "gorge" (to eat a lot) means almost the same as "ate." Then "gorge" clashes with "George" in two ways: it shows that in "George" the "g" is pronounced "j," while in "gorge" it's pronounced with a hard "g" sound; second "eor" and "or" both have the same sound though spelled differently.

---