Perfect Your English Pronunciation With This Poem - Part 1
The Chaos (1922)
Gerard Nolst Trenité
With a few minutes of practice a day you can pronounce many of these difficult english words.
This is a classic English poem containing about 800 of the worst irregularities in English spelling and pronunciation.
In order not to make you dizzy with so many abstract english words we've broken this down into several pieces for you.
The poem is spoken slowly and clearly to help you mimic the way in which the words are pronounced.
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;
Queer, fair, seer, hear my prayer.
Pray, console your loving poet,
Make my coat look new, dear, sew it!
Just compare heart, hear 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: gush, bush, steak, streak, break, bleak,
Previous, precious, fuchsia, via
Recipe, pipe, studding-sail, choir;
Woven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, shoe, poem, toe.
Say, expecting fraud and trickery:
Daughter, laughter and Terpsichore
Branch, ranch, measles, topsails, aisles,
Missiles, similes, reviles.
Wholly, holly, signal, sign-ing,
Same, examining, but mining,
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far.
From "desire": desirable-admirable from "admire",
Lumber, plumber, bier, but brier,
Topsham, brougham, renown, but known,
Knowledge, done, lone, gone, none, tone,
One, anemone, Balmoral,
June 21, 2017
