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Acronyms


solbjerg

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The Chaos

 

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.

Feoffer 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!!!

 

Dr. Gerald Nolst Trenite (1870-1946),

a Dutch observer of English.

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Yes Matt

I think this is why learning English in school is more popular than for example German.

In English grammar and pronounciation there are so many exceptions that the teachers course of action is to just make the pupils speak it and read it as much as possible, because you have to remember pronounciation and all the exceptions there and in the grammar anyway.

German on the other hand, there the teachers are very hooked on grammar, and this makes it cumbersome for the pupils, consequently it is not nearly as popular as English.

Cheers

solbjerg

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English is my home language. At school in the sixties we learn t Russian but forgotten it all now, wish I had kept it going it was easy to learn.

 

Since then tried to learn french but gave up on all the male/female lark in their language.

 

tried Japanese but the make up of the sentences lost me.

 

and last year while in hospital tried to pass the time learning mandarin but struggled with the pronunciations and gave up.

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Hi sunny

Too bad you didn't get on that slow boat to China then!

Cheers

solbjerg

p.s. I have for the past 1½ years been updating the Danish == English dictionary at www.freelang.net Have added around 85.000 words and I am still at it. There are very many free downloadable dictionaries there.

 

English is my home language. At school in the sixties we learn t Russian but forgotten it all now, wish I had kept it going it was easy to learn.

 

Since then tried to learn french but gave up on all the male/female lark in their language.

 

tried Japanese but the make up of the sentences lost me.

 

and last year while in hospital tried to pass the time learning mandarin but struggled with the pronunciations and gave up.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Hi

I was wondering

Is there a slight difference between the meanings of shut up - shutup and ShutUp (does the CamelCase in any way change the meaning?)

Now I am wondering what the UpShot of this inquiry will be? :-)

 

(is this a dromedaryCase then? :-) )

 

By the way Matt - your comment was super!! (#27)

 

Cheers

solbjerg

 

 

A (bunch of nuts)(lol) laugh out loud !! You guys are funny.
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