Pronunciation Poem

It's Wednesday, the "hump" day. Here is a silly poem about how difficult English pronunciation can be! Enjoy:

"I take it you already know

of touch and bough and cough and dough?

Others may stumble, but not you

on hiccough, thorough, laugh and through.

Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,

to learn of less familiar traps

Beware of heard, a dreadful word,

that looks like beard and sounds like bird.

And dead – its said like bed not bead—

and goodness’ sake don’t call it deed!

Watch out for meat and great and threat

(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt.)

A moth is not the moth in mother,

nor both in bother, broth in brother.

And here is not a match for there,

nor dear and fear for bear and pear.

And then there’s dose and rose and lose –

just look them up—and goose and choose,

and cork and work and card and ward

and font and front and word and sword

and do and go and thwart and cart –

come, come I’ve hardly made a start.

A dreadful language? Man alive.

I’d mastered it when I was five."

T.S.Watt (1954)