PRACTISING PRONUNCIATION

I take it you already know

Of tough and bough and cough and dough

Others may stumble, but not you,

On hiccough, thorough, slough and through

Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,

To learn the less familiar traps:

Beware of heard, a dreadful word

That looks like beard and sounds like bird.

And dead: it’s said like bed, not bead-

For goodness’ sake, don’t call it deed!

Watch out for meat and great and threat

(They rhyme with sweet and straight and debt).

A moth is not a moth in mother

Nor both in bother, broth in brother

And here is not a match for there

And dear and fear for bear and pear.

And then there’s dose and rose and lose-

Just look them up- and goose and choose

And cork and work and card and ward

And font and front and word and sword

And do and go, and thwart and cart-

Come, come, I’ve hardly made a start!

A dreadful language? Why man alive!

I learned to talk it when I was five

And yet to write it, the more I tried,

I haven’t learned at fifty-five!

(Author unknown)