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Chaos in English pronunciation

(from: `Difficulties with the pronunciation of the English Language`, Dr. G. Nolst Trenité)

Link: Read more about how to learn the English language

Dearest creature in Creation,
Studying English pronunciation
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse,
It will keep you, Susy, busy.
Make your head with heat grow dizzy;
 
Tear in eye your dress you’ll tear,
So shall I ! O 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)
Made has not the sound of bade
Say-said, pay-paid, laid, but plaid.
 
Now surely I will not plague you
With such words as vague and ague
But be careful how you speak
Say gush, bush and break and bleak.
Previous, precious; fuchsia, via;
Pipe, snipe, recipe and choir
Cloven, oven; how and low
Script, receipt; shoe, poem, toe
Hear me say, devoid of trickery:
Daughter, laughter and Terpsichore
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles
Exiles, similes, reviles
Wholly, holly, signal, signing
Thames, examining, combining
Real, zeal. Mauve, gauze and gauge
Marriage, foliage, mirage, age.
 
Query does not rhyme with very
Nor does fury sounds like bury
Host, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth
Though the difference seems little
Seat, sweat; chaste, castle, eight, height…
Hint, pint, senate, sedate, Scenic, Arabic, pacific
Science, conscience, scientific.
Tour, but our and succour, four
Sea, idea, guinea, area
Psalm; Maria but malaria
Youth, south, southern; cleanse and clean
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
 
Mark the difference moreover
Between mover, plover, Dover,
Wise, precise, but police and lice
Camel, constable, unstable
Principle, disciple, label
Suit, suite, ruin, circuit, conduit
Rhyme with `shirk it` and `beyond it`
Desert, but dessert, address and possess
Golf, wolf, river, rival, tomb, bomb, comb…
Doll and roll and some and home….
Stranger does not rhyme with anger
Font, front, wont,
want, grand and grant
 
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say: finger;
Then say singer, ginger, linger
Scholar, vicar and cigar
Solar, mica, war and far
Wind and mind, billet does not end like ballet…
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would
Liberty, library, heave and heaven
Rachel, ache, moustache eleven
 
Finally which rhymes with `enough`
Though, through, plough, cough or tough?
Hiccough has the sound of `cup`…

The only advice is: GIVE IT UP!

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