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Great one Jesse

English Pronunciation!?!
If you can pronounce correctly every word in this poem, you will be speaking English better than 90% of the native English speakers in the world. After trying the verses, a Frenchman said he'd prefer six months of hard labour to reading six lines aloud. Try them yourself.

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!!!

Jesse...can we add in quit, quite and quiet!

One Sunday, in counting the money in the weekly offering, the pastor
of a small Florida church found a pink envelope containing $1000. It
happened again the next week. The following Sunday, he watched as the
offering was collected and saw a little old lady put the distinctive
pink envelope in the plate. This went on for weeks until the pastor,
overcome by curiosity, approached her.

"Ma'am, I couldn't help but notice that you put $1,000 a week in the
collection plate," he stated.

"Why yes," she replied, "every week my son sends me money, and I give
some of it to the church."

The pastor replied, "That's wonderful, how much does he send you?"

The old lady said, "$10,000 a week."

The pastor was amazed. "Your son is very successful; what does he do
for
a living?"

"He is a veterinarian," she answered.

"That is an honorable profession," the pastor said. "Where does he
practice?"

The old lady said proudly, "In Nevada. He has two cat houses in Las
Vegas and one in Reno."

A woman goes into Wal-Mart to buy a rod and reel for her grandson's birthday.

She doesn't know which one to get so she just grabs one and goes over to the
counter. A Wal-Mart associate is standing there wearing dark shades.

She says, "Excuse me, sir. Can you tell me anything about this rod and reel?

He says, "Ma'am, I'm completely blind; but if you'll drop it on the counter, I can tell you everything you need to know about it from the sound it makes."

She doesn't believe him but drops it on the counter anyway. He says, "That's a six-foot Shakespeare graphite rod with a
Zebco 404 reel and 10-LB. test line. It's a good all around combination; and it's on sale this week for only $20.00."

She says, "It's amazing that you can tell all that just by the sound of it dropping on the counter. I'll take it!"

As she opens her purse , her credit card drops on the floor.
"Oh,that sounds like a Visa card," he says.

She bends down to pick it up and accidentally breaks wind. At first she is really embarrassed, but then realizes there is no way the blind clerk could tell it was she who farted. Being blind, he
wouldn't know that she was only person around.

The man rings up the sale and says, "That'll be $34.50, please."

The woman is totally confused by this and asks, "Didn't you tell me it was on sale for $20.00? How did you get $34.50?"

He replies, "Yes, Ma'am. The rod and reel is $20.00, but the Duck Call is $11.00 and the Catfish Bait is $3.50."

A doctor and three lawyers walked into a restaurant. Soon the waiter came over to serve them.
"Good Evening, sir," he said to the doctor. "And what would you like this evening?"
"I'd like the filet mignon, medium rare," replied the doctor.
"Would you like anything with that?"
"What do you have?"
"Salad?" suggested the waiter.
"No, thank you," said the doctor.
"Potatoes?"
"Ah, no."
"Vegetables?"
"Oh, they'll have what I'm having."

I had to read that one three times...could be because I'm a veg... I mean an attorney...

I'm of the "vegetable" persuasion myself - kinda why I thought it was funny!

hey another barrister onboard... welcome seachange

There are getting to be quite a few of us --

How do you get a dozen lawyers to agree?
Shoot 11 of them.
Shoot all of them - Who the hell wants a dozen lawyers?