>From tent_j@usp.ac.fj (Jan Tent) Sun Jan 20 11:02:31 1994
>Status:
>Subject: re: poem about pronunciation
>From: tent_j@usp.ac.fj (Jan Tent)
>Date: 20 Jan 94 11:02:31 +1200
>Organization: The University of the South Pacific
>Newsgroups: sci.lang
>Path: gd-news!news.gu.se!news.chalmers.se!sunic!pipex!howland.reston.ans.net!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!sgiblab!munnari.oz.au!usp.ac.fj!tent_j
>Message-ID: <1994Jan20.110231.219@usp>
>Lines: 33
>Article 12344
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>Here's another humorous poem about English pronunciation. The author, again, unknown.
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> A Dreadful Language
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> I take it you already know
> Of tough and bough and cough and dough
> Others may stumble, but not you,
> On hiccough, thorough, tough and through;
> Well done! And how you wish perhaps
> To learn of less familiar traps?
> Beware of heard, a dreadful word
> That looks like beard and sounds like bird.
> And dead; it's said like bed, not bead
> For goodness sake don't call it "deed".
> Watch out for meat and great and threat
> (They rhyme with suite and straight and debt)
> A moth is not a moth in mother,
> Nor both in bother, broth in brother.
> And here is not a match for there
> Nor dear and fear for bear and pear.
> And then there's dose and rose and lose
> Just look them up and goose and choose,
> And cork and work and word and sword,
> And do and go and thwart and cart.
> Come, come I've hardly made a start.
> A dreadful language? Man alive
> I mastered it when I was five.
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