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!!!
Hello?
I still live with an ancient computer. I don't see embedded you tubes. I see the links at the bottoms of pages, which mostly work. What have seen for now years is a large blank white space with a link at the bottom, to what on earth I do not know unless I click, for a surprise. A trip to a2k to see white.. and guess.
Sometimes I see three large blanks in a row.
How about intros for what you are posting?
Can any of you smarties manage to add the subject of the link?
@ossobuco,
Mine was an old song:
http://genius.com/Freddie-blassie-pencil-neck-geek-lyrics
Pencil Neck Geek
Freddie Blassie
Back when I was a kid, life was going swell
Till something happened, blew every thing to hell
That night my daddy stumbled in, all pale and weak
Said "A woman up the block just gave birth to a geek."
Mom said, "Sell it to the circus, what the heck."
Dad said, "Nope, this one's a pencil neck
And if there's one thing lower than a side show freak
It's a grit eatin', scum suckin', pencil neck geek."
You see if you take a pencil that won't hold lead
Looks like a pipe cleaner atached to a head
Add a buggy whip body with a brain that leaks
You got yourself a grit eatin', pencil neck geek
(Chorus)
Pencil neck geek, grit eatin' freak
Scum suckin', pea head with a lousy physique
He's a one man, no gut, losing streak
Nothin' but a pencil neck geek
Soon the geeks were poppin' up all over town
You couldn't hardly sneeze without knockin' one down
After a nice juicy steak, if you need a toothpick
Just reach for a geek, they'll do the trick
One day we cut one up for fish bait
Learned our lesson just a little bit late
Soon as the geek hit the drink, the water turned red
Next day, sure enough, all the fish were dead
Chorus
Most any night you know where I can be found
Yeah, stomping some geek's head into the ground
So keep the faith cause in Blassie you can trust
I won't give up 'til the last geek bites the dust
Chorus
They say, "these geeks come a dime a dozen."
I'm lookin' for the guy who's supplin' the dimes
Its gonna be real hard times for all of these
Grit eatin'
Scum suckin'
Boot lickin'
Drop kickin'
Gut grindin'
Nail bitin'
Glue sniffin'
Scab pickin'
Butt scratchin'
Egg hatchin'
Sleezy
Smelly
Pepper bellied
Dirty, lousy, rotten, stinkin', freaks
Nothing but a pencil neck geek
@InfraBlue,
No, I didn't.
Who are you to tell me what to say?
I've long liked you, now wonder what you are about, oh well.
I see we have galloped off of humor, probably my fault, for which I apologize.
We can carry on elsewhere or relax.
