Álvaro

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Dec

26

• 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.
  • Foeffer 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!!!
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