[Racer X 69]

Well.

Except maybe cameras.

[Racer X 69]

And the livE hociR.

[magkelly]

I received this in an email today. It seems relevant here.

90% Of People Can't Pronounce This Whole Poem. You Have To Try It.

If you can pronounce correctly every word in this poem, you will be speaking English better than 90% of the native English speakers in the world.

After trying the verses, a Frenchman said he’d prefer six months of hard labor to reading six lines aloud.

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!!!

That was lovely fun, and yes, I can. I just sat here and did it. If you take it slowly and really think about what you are saying it's not that hard. This one would be good one for training speech recognition software...

[Bagga_Txips]

I boasted about it earlier, I completed it at a normal speed. But, I have been teaching English and EFL for over 30 years...

[Jean Poitiers]

For "Throw back Thursday" ...

[MarkJerling]

Can you imagine how difficult it was for our Great M0d3r4t0r?

I though his first language was English?

[normhead]

I though his first language was English?

You say that like you think it makes a difference...

[rod_grant]

His first language is American.
And he seems to mix it with some Southern States stuff too, like sammich.

[Parallax]

Everything is relevant here.

Everything.

Well, not exactly. I'm not sure about post #1.

[Parallax]

His first language is American.
And he seems to mix it with some Southern States stuff too, like sammich.

Y'all is right.

[ZoeB]

For "Throw back Thursday" ...

The camera or the person?

[pishta]

Tell them you shoot Nikon...---and---Pentax when they see your shooting their wedding. You could even tell them its your back up to your Nikon that just died. Would you get gigs shooting Leica? Just dont break out the pink and green K-r.

[Racer X 69]

It doesn't rhyme... it's a homonym.

...and it's not a homonym

I like hominy.

[Racer X 69]

His first language is American.
And he seems to mix it with some Southern States stuff too, like sammich.

Wouldn't 'American' be a dialect of English?

[Racer X 69]

I've heard that some cats like water, but I've never had one that does!

I have had two cats in my days, both black. One of them was born to a feral mother on the day that our local volcano Mount St. Helens erupted in 1980. This cat really liked water, but only when it was streaming, such as from a hose. I think she was drawn to the movement, rather than the water.

At the time I lived in a house with several of my buddies from high school. I called it the 'Animal House', as it was very much like the frat house in the move Animal House. Lots of keg parties, almost continuously, and plenty of other crazy frat house kind of goings on. At one of these parties there were lots of guys going outside to get rid of their (rented) beer. Suddenly several of them came staggering in, clearly drunk, and laughing quite hard.

It seems that my cat had been drawn to the streams of pee from all the guys outside watering the bushes. She had been running back and forth through the stuff, apparently unaware of the origin.

Not wanting a pee soaked cat I snatched her up, and went to the bathroom adjacent to my bedroom ( I had the best room in the house, with my own private bathroom ) to give her a thorough cleaning.

And although she had delighted in the 'shower' she had just gotten, the bath was not something she cared for.

But after getting my arms and hands bitten and clawed up I locked her away in my bedroom and rejoined the party.

Stupid cat.