Mother Tongue

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...

Dearest creature in creation
Studying English pronunciation,
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse
I will keep you, Susy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye your dress you'll tear,
So shall I! Oh, hear my prayer,
Pray, console your loving poet,
Make my coat look new, dear, sew it!
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).
Made has not the sound of bade,
Say said, pay-paid, laid, but plaid.
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as vague and ague,
But be careful how you speak,
Say break, steak, but bleak and streak.
Previous, precious, fuchsia, via,
Pipe, snipe, recipe and choir,
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, shoe, poem, toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery:
Daughter, laughter and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles.
Exiles, similes, reviles.
Wholly, holly, signal, signing.
Thames, examining, combining
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war, and far.
From "desire": desirable--admirable from "admire."
Lumber, plumber, bier, but brier.
Chatham, brougham, renown, but known.
Knowledge, done, but gone and tone,
One, anemone. Balmoral.
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel,
Gertrude, German, wind, and mind.
Scene, Melpomene, mankind,
Tortoise, turquoise, chamois-leather,
Reading, reading, heathen, heather.
This phonetic labyrinth
Gives moss, gross, brook, brooch, ninth, plinth.
Billet does not end like ballet;
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet;
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Banquet is not nearly parquet,
Which is said to rime with "darky."
Viscous, Viscount, load, and broad.
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation's O.K.,
When you say correctly: croquet.
Rounded, wounded, grieve, and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive, and live,
Liberty, library, heave, and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven,
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the difference, moreover,
Between mover, plover, Dover,
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police, and lice.
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label,
Petal, penal, and canal,
Wait, surmise, plait, promise, pal.
Suit, suite, ruin, circuit, conduit,
Rime with "shirk it" and "beyond it."
But it is not hard to tell,
Why it's pall, mall, but Pall Mall.
Muscle, muscular, gaol, iron,
Timber, climber, bullion, lion,
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, and chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor,
Ivy, privy, famous, clamour
And enamour rime with hammer.
Pussy, hussy, and possess,
Desert, but dessert, address.
Golf, wolf, countenance, lieutenants.
Hoist, in lieu of flags, left pennants.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rime with anger.
Neither does devour with clangour.
Soul, but foul and gaunt but aunt.
Font, front, won't, want, grand, and grant.
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say: finger.
And then: singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, age.
Query does not rime with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post; and doth, cloth, loth;
Job, Job; blossom, bosom, oath.
Though the difference seems little,
We say actual, but victual.
Seat, sweat; chaste, caste.; Leigh, eight, height;
Put, nut; granite, and unite.
Reefer does not rime with deafer,
Feoffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Dull, bull, Geoffrey, George, ate, late,
Hint, pint, Senate, but sedate.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific,
Tour, but our and succour, four,
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, guinea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria,
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean,
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion with battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, key, quay.
Say aver, but ever, fever.
Neither, leisure, skein, receiver.
Never guess--it is not safe:
We say calves, valves, half, but Ralph.
Heron, granary, canary,
Crevice and device, and eyrie,
Face but preface, but efface,
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust, and scour, but scourging,
Ear but earn, and wear and bear
Do not rime with here, but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew, Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, clerk, and jerk,
Asp, 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, like rowlock, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict, and indict!
Don't you think so, reader, rather,
Saying lather, bather, father?
Finally: which rimes with "enough"
Though, through, plough, cough, hough, or tough?
Hiccough has the sound of "cup."
My advice is--give it up! 

Punny

Puns for Educated Minds:

1. The fattest knight at King Arthur's round table was Sir Cumference. He acquired his size from too much pi.

2. I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian .

3. She was only a whiskey maker, but he loved her still.

4. A rubber band pistol was confiscated from algebra class, because it was a weapon of math disruption.

5. No matter how much you push the envelope, it'll still be stationery.

6. A dog gave birth to puppies near the road and was cited for littering.

7. A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum Blownapart.

8. Two silk worms had a race. They ended up in a tie.

9. A hole has been found in the nudist camp wall. The police are looking into it.

10. Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

11. Atheism is a non-prophet organization.

12. Two hats were hanging on a hat rack in the hallway. One hat said to the other: 'You stay here; I'll go on a head.'

13. I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger. Then it hit me.

14. A sign on the lawn at a drug rehab center said: 'Keep off the Grass.'

15. The midget fortune-teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large.

16. The soldier who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is now a seasoned veteran.

17. A backward poet writes inverse.

18. In a democracy it's your vote that counts. In feudalism it's your count that votes.

19. When cannibals ate a missionary, they got a taste of religion.

20. If you jumped off the bridge in Paris , you'd be in Seine .

21. A vulture boards an airplane, carrying two dead raccoons. The stewardess looks at him and says, 'I'm sorry, sir, only one carrion allowed per passenger.'

22. Two fish swim into a concrete wall. One turns to the other and says 'Dam!'

23. Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, so they lit a fire in the craft. Unsurprisingly it sank, proving once again that you can't have your kayak and heat it too.

24. Two hydrogen atoms meet. One says, 'I've lost my electron.' The other says 'Are you sure?' The first replies, 'Yes, I'm positive.'

25. Did you hear about the Buddhist who refused Novocain during a root canal? His goal: transcend dental medication.

26. There was the person who sent ten puns to friends, with the hope that at least one of the puns would make them laugh. No pun in ten did

What's That You Said

Using the right word at the right time can sometimes be crucial.
Here are 5 words about contradictions that can be misused:

1. CATCH-22 (n.): a frustrating situation in which one is trapped by contradictory regulations or conditions. Example: A woman's child is being beaten by her father. If she reports it to the authority she is at risk of losing her child, but if she doesn't report it, the child will continue to be beaten. Its a lose-lose situation.

2. CONTRADICTION (n.): assertion of the contrary or opposite; denial. Example: I hate cats but like kittens" is a contradiction, because kittens ARE cats.

3. OXYMORON (n.): a figure of speech by which a locution produces an incongruous, seemingly self-contradictory effect. Examples: working holiday; exact estimate; original copies.

4. PARADOX (n.): a statement or proposition that seems self-contradictory or absurd but in reality expresses a possible truth. Example: When someone says to you, "I'm a compulsive liar," do you believe them or not.

5. PLEONASM (n.): the use of more words than are necessary to express an idea; redundancy. Examples: Ears pierced while you wait; It's déjà vu all over again.

Always Learning Something New...

Have you ever heard of a PARAPROSDOKIAN SENTENCE? Me either!!

A paraprosdokian (Greek--meaning “beyond expectation”) is a figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is a surprise or unexpected in a way that causes the listener to “re-interpret” the first part.

Here are some examples:

Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.

I want to die peacefully in my sleep, like my grandfather, not screaming and yelling like the passengers in his car.

Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.

If I agreed with you, we’d both be wrong.

War does not determine who is right, only who is left.

Evening news is where they begin with “Good Evening” and then proceed to tell you why it isn’t.

How is it one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?

Some people hear voices, some see invisible people, others have no imagination whatsoever.

Our biggest obstacle is the distance between our ears.

Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.

The early bird might get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.

China

As part the Chinese Immersion program at our school,
I will be visiting China for 10 days in June...

English To Be The New Official Language of Europe!!

The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a five-year phase-in plan that would become known as Euro-English.

In the first year, s will replace the soft c Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard c will be dropped in favour of k. This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter. There will be growing publik enthusiasm.

In the sekond year when the troublesome ph will be replaced with f This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent e in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away.

By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing th with z, and w with v.

During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary 'o' kan be dropd from vords kontaining 'ou' and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensibl riten styl.

Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru.

Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze forst plas.

Mother Tongue

Let's face it - English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat. We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

It's no wonder we have trouble reading sentences like these:

The bandage was wound around the wound.
The farm was used to produce produce.
The dump was so full that it had t0 refuse more refuse.
We must polish the Polish furniture.
He could lead if he would get the lead out.
The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present .
A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.
When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
I did not object to the object.
The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row .
They were too close to the door to close it.
The buck does funny things when the does are present.
A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.
I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth, beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices? Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?

If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell?

How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which, an alarm goes off by going on.

English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all. That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.

PS. Why doesn't Buick rhyme with quick...

A Lick and A Promise

"I'll just give this a lick and a promise," my mother said as she quickly mopped up a spill on the floor without moving any of the furniture.

"What is that supposed to mean," I asked as in my young mind I envisioned someone licking the floor with his or her tongue. "It means that I'm in a hurry, and I'm busy canning tomatoes, so I am going to just give it a lick with the mop and promise to come back and do the job right later.

A lick and a promise was just one of the many old phrases that our mothers, grandmothers, and

others used that they probably heard from the generations before them. With the passing of time, many old phrases become obsolete or even disappear. This is unfortunate because some of them are very appropriate and humorous. Here is a list of some of those memorable old phrases:

1. A Bone to Pick (someone who wants to discuss a disagreement)
2. An Axe to Grind (Someone who has a hidden motive. This phrase is said to have originated from Benjamin Franklin who told a story about a devious man who asked how a grinding wheel worked. He ended up walking away with his axe sharpened free of charge)
3. One bad apple spoils the whole barrel (one corrupt person can cause all the others to go bad if you don't remove the bad one)
4. At sea (lost or not understanding something)
5. Bad Egg (Someone who was not a good person)
6. Barking at a knot (meaning that your efforts were as useless as a dog barking at a knot.)
7. Barking up the wrong tree (talking about something that was completely the wrong issue with the wrong person)
8. Bee in your bonnet (To have an idea that won't let loose )
9. Been through the mill (had a rough time of it)
10. Between hay and grass (Not a child or an adult)
11. Blinky (Between sweet and sour as in milk)
12. Calaboose (a jail)
13. Catawampus (Something that sits crooked such as a piece of furniture sitting at an angle)
14. Dicker (To barter or trade)
15. Feather in Your Cap (to accomplish a goal. This came from years ago in wartime when warriors might receive a feather they would put in their cap for defeating an enemy)
16. Hold your horses (Be patient!)
17. Hoosegow ( a jail)
18. I reckon (I suppose)
19. Jawing/Jawboning (Talking or arguing)
20. Kit and caboodle (The whole thing)
21. Madder than an wet hen (really angry)
22. Needs taken down a notch or two (like notches in a belt usually a young person who thinks too highly of himself and ne eds a lesson)
23. No Spring Chicken (Not young anymore)
24. Persnickety (overly particular or snobbish)
25. Pert-near (short for pretty near)
26. Pretty is a s pretty does (your actions are more important than your looks)
27. Red up (clean the house)
28. Scalawag (a rascal or unprincipled person)
29. Scarce as hen's teeth (something difficult to obtain)
30. Skedaddle (Get out of here quickly)
31. Sparking (courting)
32. Straight From the Horse's Mouth (privileged information from the one concerned)
33. Stringing around, gallivanting around, or piddling (Not doing anything of value)
34. Sunday go to meetin' dress (The best dress you had)
35. We wash up real fine (is another goodie)
36. Tie the Knot (to get married)
37. Too many irons in the fire (to be involved in too many things)
38. Tuckered out (tired and all worn out)
39. Under the weather (not feeling well this term came from going below deck on ships due to sea sickness thus you go below or under the weather)
40. Wearing your 'best bib and tucker' (Being all dressed up)
41. You ain't the only duck in the pond (It's not all about you)

Modern Hieroglyphics

Do you recognize these symbols
and know what they mean?

Go here to see how you did...

Logical Dieting

The Japanese eat very little fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

The Mexicans eat a lot of fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

The Chinese drink very little red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

The Italians drink excessive amounts of red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

The Germans drink a lot of beer and eat lots of sausage and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

LOGICAL CONCLUSION: Eat and drink what you like. Speaking English is apparently what kills you.

Having Some Pun...

The roundest knight at King Arthur's round table was Sir Cumference. He acquired his size from too much pi.

I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian.

She was a moonshiner's daughter, but he loved her still.

A rubber band pistol was confiscated from algebra class because it was a weapon of math disruption.

No matter how much you push the envelope, it'll still be stationery.

A dog gave birth to puppies near the road and was cited for littering.

A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum Blownapart.

Two silk worms had a race. They ended up in a tie.

Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

A hole has been found in the nudist camp wall. The police are looking into it.

Atheism is a non-prophet organization.

A sign on the lawn at a drug rehab center said: 'Keep off the Grass.'

A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion.

The short fortune-teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large.

The man who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is now a seasoned veteran.

A backward poet writes inverse.

In democracy it's your vote that counts. In feudalism it's your count that votes.

When space men land, they normally say, "Take me to your leader." When they land in Las Vegas, they say. "Lead me to your taker."

Don't join dangerous cults: Practice safe sects!

Thanks for sharing, Margo...

UP

There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more
meanings than any other two-letter word...
that word is up.




~ It's easy to understand up meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning why do we wake up?
~ At a meeting, why does a topic come up?
~ Why do we speak up, and why are the officers up for election?
~ Why is it up to the secretary to write up a report?
~ We call up our friends.
~ We brighten up a room when we polish up the silver.
~ We warm up the leftovers and clean up the kitchen.
~ We lock up the house, and some guys fix up the old car.
~ People stir up trouble, and line up for tickets.
~ They work up an appetite, and think up excuses.
~ To be dressed is one thing, but to be dressed up is special.
~ And this up is confusing: A drain must be opened up because it is stopped up.
~ We open up a store in the morning, but we close it up at night.
~ We seem to be pretty mixed up about up.
~ To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of up, look the word up in the dictionary. In a desk-sized one, it takes up almost 1/4 of the page, and can add up to about 30 definitions. If you are up to it, you might try building up a list of the many ways up is used. It will be up to a hundred, more.
~ When it threatens to rain. we say it's clouding up. When it rains, it wets up the earth. When the sun comes out we say it is clearing up. When it doesn't rain at all, things dry up.
~ One could go on and on, but my time is up, so I will shut up and wrap it up...

Oh, one more thing... What is the first thing you do in the morning, and the last thing you do at night... u p.


How do non-native speakers ever learn English?