h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I found this! But we do spake rait 'over here dun't we


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 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!!!


Author Unknown!

That's brilliant.

My brain hurts!!!!


GT

I don't speak it, so I ain't going to try

I just read this aloud to Elektra, who is still laughing.

Especially as we probably don't pronounce all the words the same.

Do y'all really pronounce 'groats' like 'grits'?

'groats' like 'grits'? not in our part of country

You can check here:

http://www.howjsay.com (only that they don't know groat )

Ooopps Prof!!!

Big Brother is watching you!!!!



GT

it'll be rait

I hope the mods let us have it back Prof! I was in the middle of replying when it vanished! It's a brilliant thing to discuss. Thanks for posting it.

Eh?? What did you say Prof?

it's being sortedwatch this space all being well

someone said somethin "42" minutes ago and i dont know what it was

Probably a copyright issue.

Lanza, I can post it to you on fb if Prof emails me the original.

on its way B'El

Good Idea!!

Can you EMail to me as well, Prof???


GT

Thanks B'el - it's the sort of thing we used to laugh about when we were trying to teach spelling ( back in the day, when I used to work for a living)

I have trouble believing that doggerel - no matter how entertaining - was copyrighted.

It looked like computer forward glurge to me.

I agree Dmitri - the sort of thing handed round at teacher meetings.

Got the email, cheers, prof.