A treat for all of you!

"'The Chaos' is a poem which demonstrates the irregularity of English spelling and pronunciation, written by Dutch writer, traveller and teacher Gerard Nolst Trenite (1870-1946), also known under the pseudonym Charivarius. It includes about 800 examples of irregular pronunciation, and first appeared in an appendix to the author's 1920 textbook Drop Your Foreign Accent: engelsche uitspraakoefeningen . It has appeared in various versions: the author's first version had 146 lines but "the most complete and authoritative version ever likely to emerge", published by The Spelling Society in 1992-93, has 274 lines."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chaos

Read it out loud:

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!!!

^ Congratulations! If you can pronounce every single word in this poem correctly, you are better than 90% of native English speakers.

That was brilliant :O

Haha I shared something similar to that in my club before, a poem mocking the contradictions you can find in the English language.

however...I think I should be proud of myself lol :P

Omg that was amazing
I mostly made every single word (wrong) =P
It was funny reading them xD

I read them. Not hard at all. Who speaks Russian, can pronounce anything, I believe.

I stumbled over a couple words.

Awesome

This was great, Jane! Thanks for sharing.

I stumbled here and there.

Wow! Thanks for sharing...

I stumbled over so many loool

BTW, can someone who is an expert in pronunciation read us this piece above in a clear tone;;;; I would like to learn them all correctly. It's so very useful!

He/She can use:

http://vocaroo.com/

to record the voice... Pleasseeee, anyone :P

This is very clever and would be great for teaching correct pronunciation, i think more than 10% of native english speakers would be able to complete correctly, none the less very cool i will use this to help my son with correct pronunciation :-))

I stumbled over a few too, but this was really neat:)

If you want to know how to pronouce words, you can look it up here (a voice will read it out loud in perfect English for you):

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/hello

ps: press the blue horn to make it talk!

Oh Ingrid, I know I'm not the one who asked you for this but thank you, I was pronouncing a word completely wrong, haha!

Thanks Ingrid :)

lol, Im lazy, I just needed someone to comfort me instead of listening to every word.

Welcome, guys:)