English Pronunciation
- 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.
- Fe0ffer 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!!!
- English Pronunciation by G. Nolst Trenité
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