HINTS ON PRONUNCIATION FOR FOREIGNERS

I take it you already know

Of tough and bough and cough and dough?

Other may stumble, but not you,on hiccough, thorough, tough and through

Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,

To learn of less familiar traps.

Beware of heard: a dreadful word

That looks like beard and sounds 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 suite 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.

Nor 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? Man alive!

I’d mastered it when I was five!

I will teach you in my verse

Words like corps, corks, horse and worse.

For this phonetic labyrinth

Gives monkey, donkey, ninth and plinth:

Wounded, rounded, grieve and sieve:

Friend and fiend, alive and live.

Query does not rhyme with very

Nor does fury sound like bury.

Dies and diet: lord and word,

Earth and hearth and clerk and herd:

Evil, devil, tomb, bomb, comb:

Doll, roll, dull, bull, some and home.

Finally, for I’ve said enough.

Through though thorough plough cough tough!

While hiccough has the sound of cup...

My advice is: GIVE IT UP!