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Posts: 1,981
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 1,981 |
Excellent - this is very similar to the list I had seen.
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Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 23
stranger
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stranger
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 23 |
Aha...
We'll use this one then and try to add to it. Thanks for your offer to search. This will work well.
Tu
Tu
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 6
stranger
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stranger
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 6 |
I couldn't resist posting this. It is long. Sorry. I have hung on to this for several years and it still amazes some when they see it for the first time. You must read it aloud and I suspect you must use american pronunciation (:-).
WHY IS ENGLISH THE LINGUA FRANCA?
Multi-national personnel at North Atlantic Treaty Organization headquarters near Paris found English to be an easy language ...
until they tried to pronounce it. To help them discard an array of accents, the verses below were devised. After trying them, a Frenchman said he'd prefer six months at hard labor to reading six lines aloud. Try them yourself.
ENGLISH IS TOUGH STUFF
======================
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!!!
-- Author Unknown
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Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 81
journeyman
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journeyman
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 81 |
From the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language.
Given the pronunciation of enough, women and nation what is a ghoti.
{clue; it swims}
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 1,981
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 1,981 |
I'll pass it round - I always thought English was hard.
I assume the pronunciation of victual is like vit-tle (its only a word I ever heard in "The Beverly Hill Billies - from my youth, I always wanted to be Ellie May(now that's an admission!))
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 1,981
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 1,981 |
Along the same lines -
Does any one know the Two Ronnies sketch (not sure if it crossed the Altantic or Pacific) where the man goes into the hardware shop and askes for certian things - each time a few things are presented before the get the right one.
For example he asks for "hose" and gets offered "panty hose" or a hosepipe - someone is bound to remember the rest!
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 6,511
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 6,511 |
Refresh my memory : Wasn't it G.B. Shaw who came up with this alternate spelling?
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 460
addict
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addict
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 460 |
I think you're right, Anna. I also have a faint memory of the letters 'potato' being used to form the same word as the letters 'ghoti' do.
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613 |
To all: I was fascinated, when I clicked on gurunet, to
find the following when I clicked on a related site--
Ghoti Hook : Behind The Music
Ghoti Hook formed in November, 1991. Joel Bell, Adam Neubauer and former member, Justin Levy, started the band. The boys grew up in the same church and discovered a passion for starting a band in 1989. Christian Ergueta, Dan Feliciano and Conrad Tolosa were other friends in the church who became part of the original line-up. The band contained three guitar players (Conrad, Dan and Justin), a bass player (Christian), drummer (Adam) and a vocalist (Joel). They chose the name Ghoti Hook from a suggestion by Adam's dad ("ghoti" is the phonetic spelling of the word "fish" and is pronounced "go-dee").
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613 |
Steve--that was wonderful! I laughed out loud. I started
to print it out, then realized there's nobody I know
face-to-face who is as interested in words as I am, though
they are tolerant of my rapturous ravings. Hooray for this
bulletin board! Thanks a bunch for the effort you put in.
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