Something light: FW: "English is Tough Stuff"

>Multi-national personnel at North Atlantic Treaty Organization headquarters
>near Paris found English to be an easy language ...  until they tried to
>pronounce it.  To help them discard an array of accents, the verses below
>were  devised.  After trying them, a Frenchman said he'd prefer six months
>at
>hard  labor to reading six lines aloud.  Try them yourself.
>
>
>                ENGLISH IS TOUGH STUFF
>                ======================
>
>                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.
>                My advice is to give up!!!
>
>                                               -- Author Unknown
>