An EVIL poem!

[sraun]

And how do you pronounce all those words?

http://spelling.wordpress.com/2007/09/05/english-pronunciation/

(I can't decide if I want the stress in the question on "do" or "you"!)

Comments

[barondave.livejournal.com]

Thanks, have forwarded this to my mother (who wrote a book on the same subject for grade schoolers called "Crazy English, or Throw Out Wednesday".

[trixtah.livejournal.com]

Hee, that's fab.

It nearly lost me with the first sentence though: "If you can pronounce correctly every word in this poem..." - I was going to have a rant if it turned out to be accent-specific. :-)

I've been thinking about that kind of thing lately. In NZ English, for example, bear, bare and beer all sound the same. As do shear and share. Pull and pool are identical too (although the "oo" in "too" is standard) - none of these things are true for Australian English. No wonder we can find each other hard to understand sometimes in spoken language. God help any non-native English speakers.

[trixtah.livejournal.com]

Except, except, "little" and "victual" certainly don't rhyme for me! I actually do say the latter the same as "actual". Oh well.

[kerianth.livejournal.com]

That was wonderful! :D Definitely needs to be read aloud for the best effect.

[dr-a-nightfall.livejournal.com]

I got through it with flying colours... for a UK native!

I wonder how some other people would say it?

[dan-ad-nauseam.livejournal.com]

In the early part of his career, Dr. Seuss wrote an essay called "The Tough Coughs as He Ploughs the Dough," in which the narrator gets in repeated trouble by mispronouncing "ough" words.