Wednesday Wildcard: T.S. Watt’s Pronunciation Poem

Here is a silly poem about how difficult English pronunciation can be, to get you through the day with a smile on your face. You might need help getting your tongue back in your mouth at the end though.

T.S. Watt’s Pronunciation Poem (1954)

"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."

I hope you enjoyed the pronunciation poem. Your head should stop hurting in the next 24 hours. While you wait, you can have a look at some of the other English Learning Materials I’ve made or the private online English lessons I teach. Have fun!