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.

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.

Fe0ffer 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!!!

English Pronunciation by G. Nolst Trenité

Dearest creature in creation,

Study English pronunciation...

Wonderful. Beautiful. Superlative.

My full applause I with gusto give.

It made me mess up one time, and I had to break cadence a lot, but I think I did well on that poem.

Behold the beauty of medium format film. Is there a piece of this story that you can't understand because of the format?

I didn't think so.

Wow.

^^ Besides framing, exposure, timing and all that, the photographer carried his camera up there which is pretty impressive to mere mortals like myself.

Strictly speaking, this is NSFW:

That is beyond awesome. I have always wanted to see it. One day...

Not so much "Pew Pew Pew!" as "Ew. Ew. Eww."

^^^ 50 Cent's collection.

That scope will just hit her in the nose when she fires... oh well at least she is wearing some sort of camo...

That scope will just hit her in the nose when she fires... oh well at least she is wearing some sort of camo...

Too funny. The camo was so well hidden, I didn't even see it!

Too funny. The camo was so well hidden, I didn't even see it!

WTF were you looking at dude. It's right there wrapping her boobies!

And I'll be glad to help her prevent a little scope bite ... spread you legs a little more ... lay a little flatter ...

... here, let me get behind you and help you position your arms ... spread your legs a little more so I can put my weight on my knees ...

... okay now stretch out a bit ... ahhh, nice, lemme hold you steady here ....

... man, I gotta go ... back in a bit ...

.

Edited January 9, 201214 yr by Tyll Hertsens

WTF were you looking at dude. It's right there wrapping her boobies!

Just saw the boobies at first; nothing else. Then tried reading the brand of her undies.

Brid, brid, brid is a wrod!

Cooking with Colin.

WTF were you looking at dude. It's right there wrapping her boobies!

And I'll be glad to help her prevent a little scope bite ... spread you legs a little more ... lay a little flatter ...

... here, let me get behind you and help you position your arms ... spread your legs a little more so I can put my weight on my knees ...

... okay now stretch out a bit ... ahhh, nice, lemme hold you steady here ....

... man, I gotta go ... back in a bit ...

.

He'll be in his bunk.

This is why you don't buy cheap usb hubs from ebay.

Woman's bungee cord snaps. She lands in crocodile-infested water and swims through rapids to safety. http://bit.ly/AsIVpK

Pro bowler fail. Mark is zero, Dude.