Read the poem out.
The Chaos
An Ode to English Pronunciation
By Gerard Nolst Trenité
Dearest creature in creation,
Studying English pronunciation:
I will teach you in my verse
Words like corpse, corps, horse and worse.
I will keep you, Susy, busy:
Make your head with heat grow dizzy,
Tear in eye your dress you’ll tear!
Dear, fair seer, 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 I surely will not plague you
With such words as vague and ague,
But be careful how you speak:
Break but breakfast, steak and streak.
Previous, precious, media, via,
Pipe but recipe; and choir.
Script, receipt; and how but low,
Goes but does and shoe but toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery:
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Measure, measles, raise and aisle,
Exile, simile, revile.
Wholly, holly; signal, signing;
Thames, examining, combining.
Scholar, vicar and cigar —
Solar, mica, war and far.
1
Admirable from admire;
Skier, fierce and amplifier.
Flower and flour, renown but known,
Knowledge; done but gone and tone.
Lumber, plumber, laundry, laurel,
Gertrude, German, more but moral.
Choral, coral and chorale,
Wind, to wind; more ale, morale.
I shan’t test your expertise
By asking you to tell me, please,
Funny rhymes to scorn and storm —
Yes, you know them: Vaughan and Maugham.
Note that Leicester, Worcester, Glocester
Rhyme with tester, puszta, foster.
Think of words that are so near:
Romania, mania, Tanzania.
Tortoise, turquoise, chamois-leather
Reading, Reading, heathen, heather.
This phonetic labyrinth
Gives moss, gross, brook, brooch, ninth and plinth.
Billet doesn’t sound like ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like hood,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Banquet is not nearly parquet,
Which is said to rhyme with darky.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Forward, coward and toward.
Your pronunciation is O.K.
When you say correctly croquet.
Rounded, wounded; grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend; alive and live.
Have and haven, heave and heaven,
Steadfast, breakfast, even, seven.
We say swallowed but allowed,
People, leopard, load, aloud.
Mark the differences moreover
As in mover, lover, Dover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice but police and lice!
Panel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label,
Penal, penalty, canal,
Football, cannibal and pal.
Suit, suite, ruin, circuit, conduit
Rhyme with shirk it and beyond it.
2
And we all quite clearly shall
See it’s pall, mall but Pall Mall.
Muscle, muscular and iron,
Timber, climber, bullion, lion.
Storm, worm, warm; chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Ivy, privy; clamour, glamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
Pussy, hussy and possess,
To desert, dessert; assess.
River, rival; tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger doesn’t rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Soul but foul and gaunt but aunt,
Front, font, wont, want, grand and grant.
Golf but wolf; now first say finger,
And then: singer, ginger, linger.
Zeal and real; goal, gaol, gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, age.
Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Lost, dost, post and doth, cloth, both;
Job, Job, blossom, bosom, oath.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion with battalion;
Say aver but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, vein, deceiver.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual;
Seat, sweat; chaste, caste; Leigh, eight, height,
Put, nut, granite but unite.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer;
Pepper does, and zephyr, heifer.
Dull, bull, Geoffrey, George, ate, late,
Pink, pint, senate, and sedate.
Sea, idea, guinea, area,
Psalm, Maria but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean,
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.
Tour but our, succour, four,
Gas, alas and Arkansas.
3
Never guess — it isn’t safe:
We say calves, valves, half but Ralph!
Canaan, granary, canary,
Crevice but device and eyrie.
Face but preface — though efface,
Phlegm, phlegmatic; ass, glass, bass.
Large but target; gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour but scourging.
Monkey, donkey, clerk and perk,
Asp, grasp, wasp and cork and work.
Pronunciation — think of psyche! —
Is a paling stout and spiky.
Don’t you think so, reader, rather,
Seeing gather, bather, father?
Which word best rhymes with enough:
Though, through, plough, cough, hough or tough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup …
My advice is — give it up!
4