Uploaded November 2016 | Updated September 2026, 23 hours ago

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90% of even native English speakers CANNOT pronounce this Entire Poem correctly. If you can master this pronunciation poem you are on your way to becoming a VERY fluent English speaker.

TEXT:
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,

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.

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; shoe, 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;

Scene, Melpomene, mankind;
Billet does not end like 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 O.K.
When you say correctly; croquet;

Rounded, wounded;
grieve and sieve;
Friend and fiend, alive and live,
Ivy, privy; famous; clamour,
And enamour rime with "hammer".

River, rival; tomb, bomb, comb;
Doll and roll, and some and home.
Stranger does not rime with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.

Soul, but foul; and gaunt, but aunt;
Font, front, won't; want,
grand and grant;
Shoes, goes, does.
Now first say finger,
And then; singer, ginger, linger.

And then; singer, ginger, linger.
Real, zeal; mauve, gauze and gauge;
Marriage, foliage, mirage, age.
Query does not rime with very,

Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post; and doth, cloth, loth;
Job, knob; bosom, oath.
Though the difference seems little

We say actual, but victual;
Reefer does not rime with deafer,
Feoffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Hint, pint; senate, but sedate.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific;

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, penal 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 with battalion,

Sally with ally, Yea, Ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, key, quay.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.

Heron, granary, canary;
Crevice and device and eyrie;
Face, preface, but 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 rime
with "here" but "ere".

Seven is right, but so is even;
Hyphen, roughen, nephew, Stephen;
Monkey, donkey; clerk and jerk;
Asp, 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 rimes with "enough",
Though, through, plough,
or dough or cough
Hiccough has the sound of "cup",
My advice is to give it up!