This just totally messed with my head - English really is crazy!!

[rangaryan]

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.

After trying the verses, a Frenchman said he’d prefer six months of hard labour to reading six lines aloud.

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.
Fe0ffer 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!!!

English Pronunciation by G. Nolst Trenité

[vw08]

Love it!  I've seen this a few times before and have never been able to make it all the way to the end reading it.  Definitely good practice for pronunciation and careful reading.

[FloridaGator314]

All languages have their oddities though. One of my favorites is the Chinese poem "Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den" in which each and every single word is "shi" with different tones.

[justanotherwaygook]

"Friend and fiend, alive and live."

Which pronunciation is supposed to be used here?  Long 'i' or short one?

[JahRhythm]

Short...obviously

[#basedcowboyshirt]

"Friend and fiend, alive and live."

Which pronunciation is supposed to be used here?  Long 'i' or short one?

Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.

Short would be correct.

[Damien]

Yeah, every language has their share of odd things. Not ALL Korean words are said exactly how they are written. My Korean friend was showing me some words, can't remember them off the top of my head, with the consonant in one grouping being actually pronounced in the next syllable over the one in the grouping. He would write a word and I would pronounce it as I was assumed it would be, I was wrong every time lol. Some languages have far more oddities than others, English for example lol.

[fishead]

 They usually put something like that in online tesl programs right before the phonetic code.

[Sticks]

Made it to the end but caught myself second guessing a few times. (Does this need Australian/British/American accent or what...)

I'm printing this out and sticking it to my wall.

[sejongthefabulous]

Korean follows a predictable and constant pattern. This poem provides hundreds of examples of how English doesn't.
You are thinking of 받침 (end consonants shifting over to the beginning of the next syllable whenever it starts with a vowel and becoming initial consonants) ...this is a basic concept used for reading and pronouncing Korean, it's not an exception. There are a few more cases that when specific letters are together they are read a specific way, but again a predictable pattern.

[TheWB18]

Just started watching this () last night.

It makes sense that English grammar is so convoluted, because the history of English is so convoluted and multi-faceted.  At least among the European languages, none have absorbed so much from so many sources. 

One really great example: daughter is pronounced nothing like how it is spelled, but in Old English, borrowed from Old Norse, it was pronounced exactly as spelled ("daw-gha-tere", or something like that).  It's really quite beautiful the way our language evolved into what it is today...although telling my confused 6th graders that "daughter" is pronounced "daw-ter" because it's based on Old Norse isn't gonna make things any easier for them.

[justanotherwaygook]

Korean follows a predictable and constant pattern. This poem provides hundreds of examples of how English doesn't.
You are thinking of 받침 (end consonants shifting over to the beginning of the next syllable whenever it starts with a vowel and becoming initial consonants) ...this is a basic concept used for reading and pronouncing Korean, it's not an exception. There are a few more cases that when specific letters are together they are read a specific way, but again a predictable pattern.

There is at least one exception I can think of:
This is something I posed to a Korean, asking them to pronounce it, then answer why, to which she had no answer.  Now, if there is an explanation, I'm all ears.  I would love to know, as I'm still a beginner.

For instance, the 받침 generally takes over when followed by 'ㅇ' but take the following for example, where ㅌ is the 받침 following 'ㅏ' and is followed by '이' in both sentences.

같이 하다- pronounced like 가치. 
팥이 맛있다- pronounced like 파시 (or maybe 씨).

I don't see why the sound of ㅌ is different in the 2 sentences.  Then there's also 아이스 티, which sounds the way it first appears.  It's not 받침, but I don't see why ㅌ should sound different when it is 받침 followed by ㅇ.

[confusedsafferinkorea]

Piece of cake...