THE CHAOS
by Dr. Gerard Nolst TrenitéDearest 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.
Pray, console your loving poet,
Make my coat look new, dear, sew it!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!!!Finland: laughs in
kuusi palaaThis is a terrible example. All these sentances are easy to understand the meaning of.
There are also sentances like this in other languages(ex.: As fi luat o noua broasca la ora noua, dar m-a oprit o broasca.)
Yes I think many languages have homonyms.
Anglos cannot accept their language is the easiest european one to learn for some reason.
It’s actually funny how they try to convince themselves of the complexity of their language, often the only one they know. xD
The only thing I found hard about learning English is that you can’t just read the word to know how it’s pronounced. I do like to impress Americans with my uncanny capability to tell you the gender of objects.
The worst part is that some of this text difficulties are unwritten grammar rules.
One of my favorite examples of crazy English is: “All of the faith that he had had had had no effect on the outcome of his life.”
On the exam, Johnny, while Bobby had had ‘had’, had had ‘had had’. ‘Had had’ had had a better effect on the teacher.
The owner of a fish and chips shop in Blackpool was having a sign made. The sign painter drew a mock up, and showed it to the shop owner, but it was a little cramped. The shop owner asked the sign painter to “leave a little more space between fish and and and and and chips.”
Realising how funny it sounded he said, “wait, no, write that down! I can call my shop that!” The sign painte diligently drew up another draft, but again it was a little cramped. The shop owner, exasperated, said “no, now we need more space between fish and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and chips!”
He paused, and his face lit up, “write that down!” And so te sign painter…
No matter how many times I read this it makes no sense, why so many ands the first time?
A more detailed version of the sentence would be:
We need more space between the word fish & the word and, & the word and & the word chips
3 of the "and"s are the literal actual word “and”, while the other two are referring to the word “and” on the sign.
That helped, thank you!
I know this is really just pointing out some amusing homonyms for laughs, but languages aren’t really harder or easier to learn. How hard or easy you find a language depends on you, the languages you know and how different the other language is.
It’s common to hear that English is hard because English is the most common second language, so there’s are just more people who’ve tried to learn it and thus more people who’ve struggled.
I’ve never heard anyone saying English is hard. The only hard part of English is the pronunciation, because it doesn’t make sense, you just have to know all the words…
It’s wide adoption has probably been helped by the ease of learning its basics.
It’s not hard, it’s just that you have to know everything!
…that makes it hard!
*laughs in UkrainianIs that even worse? Care to give a (translated) example, I’m curious.
far more complex than English. you can find plenty of information on YouTube on what exactly is hard to grasp for an English-speaker while learning the Ukrainian language.
I can imagine it is complex, but is it also complicated with these stupid inconsistencies as in English? Complexity is hard, but can be a good thing if it’s just much logic. In English the logic has sadly been long lost as seen in the original post.
I’ve always heard English is three languages stacked up and wearing a trench coat.
It’s a lazy language tbh. One of the less complex
