English is Tough Stuff

troll

1. English is Tough Stuff
   
2. 
   
3. to all non-native English LQ members:
   
4. 
   
5. Chaos
   
6. 
   
7. Dearest creature in creation,
   
8. Study English pronunciation.
   
9. I will teach you in my verse
   
10. Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
    
11. I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
    
12. Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
    
13. Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
    
14. So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
    
15. 
    
16. Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
    
17. Dies and diet, lord and word,
    
18. Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
    
19. (Mind the latter, how it's written.)
    
20. Now I surely will not plague you
    
21. With such words as plaque and ague.
    
22. But be careful how you speak:
    
23. Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
    
24. Cloven, oven, how and low,
    
25. Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
    
26. 
    
27. Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
    
28. Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
    
29. Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
    
30. Exiles, similes, and reviles;
    
31. Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
    
32. Solar, mica, war and far;
    
33. One, anemone, Balmoral,
    
34. Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
    
35. Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
    
36. Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
    
37. 
    
38. Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
    
39. Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
    
40. Blood and flood are not like food,
    
41. Nor is mould like should and would.
    
42. Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
    
43. Toward, to forward, to reward.
    
44. And your pronunciation's OK
    
45. When you correctly say croquet,
    
46. Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
    
47. Friend and fiend, alive and live.
    
48. 
    
49. Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
    
50. And enamour rhyme with hammer.
    
51. River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
    
52. Doll and roll and some and home.
    
53. Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
    
54. Neither does devour with clangour.
    
55. Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
    
56. Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
    
57. Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
    
58. And then singer, ginger, linger,
    
59. Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
    
60. Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.
    
61. 
    
62. Query does not rhyme with very,
    
63. Nor does fury sound like bury.
    
64. Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
    
65. Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
    
66. Though the differences seem little,
    
67. We say actual but victual.
    
68. Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
    
69. Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
    
70. Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
    
71. Dull, bull, and George ate late.
    
72. Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
    
73. Science, conscience, scientific.
    
74. 
    
75. Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
    
76. Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
    
77. We say hallowed, but allowed,
    
78. People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
    
79. Mark the differences, moreover,
    
80. Between mover, cover, clover;
    
81. Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
    
82. Chalice, but police and lice;
    
83. Camel, constable, unstable,
    
84. Principle, disciple, label.
    
85. 
    
86. Petal, panel, and canal,
    
87. Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
    
88. Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
    
89. Senator, spectator, mayor.
    
90. Tour, but our and succour, four.
    
91. Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
    
92. Sea, idea, Korea, area,
    
93. Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
    
94. Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
    
95. Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
    
96. 
    
97. Compare alien with Italian,
    
98. Dandelion and battalion.
    
99. Sally with ally, yea, ye,
    
100. Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
     
101. Say aver, but ever, fever,
     
102. Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
     
103. Heron, granary, canary.
     
104. Crevice and device and aerie.
     
105. 
     
106. Face, but preface, not efface.
     
107. Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
     
108. Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
     
109. Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
     
110. Ear, but earn and wear and tear
     
111. Do not rhyme with here but ere.
     
112. Seven is right, but so is even,
     
113. Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
     
114. Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
     
115. Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.
     
116. 
     
117. Pronunciation -- think of Psyche!
     
118. Is a paling stout and spikey?
     
119. Won't it make you lose your wits,
     
120. Writing groats and saying grits?
     
121. It's a dark abyss or tunnel:
     
122. Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
     
123. Islington and Isle of Wight,
     
124. Housewife, verdict and indict.
     
125. 
     
126. Finally, which rhymes with enough --
     
127. Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
     
128. Hiccough has the sound of cup.
     
129. My advice is to give up!!!
     
130. 
     
131.                                        by Gerald Nolst Trenite

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以前从LinuxQuestions.org上看到的，随手摘录，今天翻旧货时翻了出来，与大家共飨。

当时发贴的人说作者和标题未知，其实作者是荷兰人Gerald Nolst Trenite (1870-1946)，他自称"a Dutch observer of English“，标题则为Chaos。

如果你能流利地把整首诗一字不差地朗读出来，那么恭喜你，你的英语语音水平已经超过了百分之九十的英语母语系人士。