Tumgik
howaboutwedont · 1 day
Text
If you can correctly pronounce 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!!!
– The Chaos by Gerard Nolst Trenité
141K notes · View notes
howaboutwedont · 1 day
Text
Tumblr media
1K notes · View notes
howaboutwedont · 1 day
Text
when u Mom com home and make hte spagheti
Tumblr media
753K notes · View notes
howaboutwedont · 1 day
Text
when mary oliver said ‘if you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. give in to it.’
and mahmoud darwish said ‘and if happiness should surprise you again, do not mention its previous betrayal.
enter into the happiness, and burst.’
3K notes · View notes
howaboutwedont · 1 day
Text
Tumblr media
1K notes · View notes
howaboutwedont · 1 day
Text
Found my 53yo very-much-not-online father in the kitchen today meticulously arranging cutlery on the countertop and i was like 'what are you doing' and he looked up at me with the world's most shit-eating grin and said "Your mother told me this is how you rick-roll the Youth" and i looked over and it was fucking. Loss.jpg.
85K notes · View notes
howaboutwedont · 1 day
Text
I love the term “loanwords” because it implies that you intend to give them back.
73K notes · View notes
howaboutwedont · 1 day
Text
dating an identical twin scares me bc what if i get them confused
338K notes · View notes
howaboutwedont · 1 day
Text
Tumblr media
158K notes · View notes
howaboutwedont · 1 day
Text
Love that one scene in Return Of The King that's like "bad news, sauron knows everything pippin knows. good news, pippin knows absolutely fuck all."
78K notes · View notes
howaboutwedont · 1 day
Text
Tumblr media
1K notes · View notes
howaboutwedont · 2 days
Text
Tumblr media
18K notes · View notes
howaboutwedont · 2 days
Text
i hate it when i cant even write a poem about something because its too obvious. like in the airbnb i was at i guess it used to be a kids room cause you could see the imprint of one little glow in the dark star that had been missed and painted over in landlord white. like that's a poem already what's the point
265K notes · View notes
howaboutwedont · 5 days
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
52 notes · View notes
howaboutwedont · 5 days
Text
girl who has given up 100,000,000,000 times
42K notes · View notes
howaboutwedont · 5 days
Photo
Tumblr media
Mundane America. Broken pole with rope and an American Flag. Cincinnati, Ohio.
113K notes · View notes
howaboutwedont · 5 days
Text
warm orange windows and blue night in the background save me. save me warm orange windows and blue night
5K notes · View notes