Languages
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
Dear reader,
I have just read a piece of information about the oddities of English and I think that I might contribute something to this subject.
As I am German, English is not my mother toungue, but I used to have English as an A-Level for the German 'Abitur' (something like the graduation) and I love English and languages.
However, the thing I would like to present to you is a little poem called 'HINTS IN PRONOUNCIATION FOR FOREIGNERS' that was published in the 'London Sunday Times' in March 1965. My former English teacher gave it to us so that we could see that the English pronounciation is not always as simple as it may seem.
I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough
Others may stumble but not you
On hiccough, thorough, laugh, and through.
Well done! And now 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 is 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 card and ward,
And font and front 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'd mastered it when i was five!
With this poem, full of traps for a German pupil, we made a contest and not a single one of us was entirely without failure. The best result was five mistakes.
So, this is my contribution to the topic of the English language from the view of a foreigner.
I have just read a piece of information about the oddities of English and I think that I might contribute something to this subject.
As I am German, English is not my mother toungue, but I used to have English as an A-Level for the German 'Abitur' (something like the graduation) and I love English and languages.
However, the thing I would like to present to you is a little poem called 'HINTS IN PRONOUNCIATION FOR FOREIGNERS' that was published in the 'London Sunday Times' in March 1965. My former English teacher gave it to us so that we could see that the English pronounciation is not always as simple as it may seem.
I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough
Others may stumble but not you
On hiccough, thorough, laugh, and through.
Well done! And now 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 is 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 card and ward,
And font and front 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'd mastered it when i was five!
With this poem, full of traps for a German pupil, we made a contest and not a single one of us was entirely without failure. The best result was five mistakes.
So, this is my contribution to the topic of the English language from the view of a foreigner.
