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How good is your pronounciation?

(121 Posts)
lucid Mon 14-May-12 10:23:18

A friend emailed this to me....you really need to read it out loud. It made me laugh grin

IF YOU CAN PRONOUNCE CORRECTLY EVERY WORD IN THIS POEM, YOU SPEAK ENGLISH BETTER THAN 98% OF THE WORLD'S ENGLISH SPEAKERS.

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.

Elegran Wed 16-May-12 08:46:42

Was Friar Tuck a pheasant plucker?

greenmossgiel Wed 16-May-12 09:19:24

Elegran! grin! Love it!

Elegran Wed 16-May-12 10:34:35

Tonguetwister for Greenmosgiel :

I am a pheasant plucker
A pheasant plucker's son
I love plucking pheasants
Plucking pheasants' fun

greenmossgiel Wed 16-May-12 10:49:28

Thank you, Elegran! Tied in with 'Friar Tuck' and changing the first letters of those words you've got ...er....blush

Elegran Wed 16-May-12 11:16:25

They are wrong, Green It is no fun plucking a pheasant. They have too many feathers (and not necessarily in the right order)

Gally Wed 16-May-12 13:40:32

Oooh Elegran grin Love it!!

mrsmopp Mon 09-Jul-12 00:12:30

Had a Spoooner on my family too - my dad called Lonnie Donegan (who I was quite keen on at the time) - Donnie Lonegan, he was always doing it to make us laugh. Then one day he bought me a pack of barley sugars and without thinking first I "spoonered" it and shocked myself! I was quite young at the time.

Greatnan Mon 09-Jul-12 08:50:01

Do you say 'in -teg-ral' or 'inter-gral'? 'Con-trov-ersy' or 'Contra-versy'?

jeni Mon 09-Jul-12 09:35:36

The first I both cases

whenim64 Mon 09-Jul-12 09:37:47

First, too. Why?

Ella46 Mon 09-Jul-12 10:03:18

Same here, I suppose it's how we've always heard them spoken.

Greatnan Mon 09-Jul-12 10:07:24

Just interested as I have heard them said both ways by radio presenters.

Maniac Mon 09-Jul-12 10:28:01

When l did A level Botany the lecturers disagreed about pronunciation of 'lichen' One said 'litchen',the other 'liken'.What do you say?

Anagram Mon 09-Jul-12 10:42:54

I say 'liken'
Almonds - ahmonds or olmands?

Ella46 Mon 09-Jul-12 16:43:14

Olmands, litchen.

mrshat Mon 09-Jul-12 17:33:56

Ahmonds and litchen

gracesmum Mon 09-Jul-12 17:41:50

Re the barley sugars we have always referred to them as Charlie Buggers and our 3 gitls gre up believeing that to be the correct name. A bit like "swanjets" .

Annobel Mon 09-Jul-12 17:45:50

Ahmonds, liken (but litchen also correct according to Concise Oxford Dictionary).

Anagram Mon 09-Jul-12 18:09:18

Yes, I think they are both considered correct - like a lot of pronunciations, I suppose!

jeni Mon 09-Jul-12 18:29:26

Almonds liken

nanaej Mon 09-Jul-12 18:50:38

Ahmonds liken

greenmossgiel Mon 09-Jul-12 18:56:07

Ahmonds liken.

Bags Mon 09-Jul-12 19:47:41

ahmonds liken

BTW, I just noticed the spelling mistake in the title of this thread. I suppose it was a test.

Anagram Mon 09-Jul-12 19:48:42

I noticed that, Bags! Didn't like to say anything....wink

syberia Tue 10-Jul-12 10:49:32

A friend of mine says "or- ree" for awry, not a word you hear very often.

Do you pronounce "often" as it appears or "offen"?

Another friend says "swinging his leg" meaning swinging the lead.

My husband ALWAYS says "Pacific" and it drives me mad!!