The Chaos, by G N Trenite

For the Linguaphiles Among Us (originally titled The Chaos, by G N Trenite)

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.
Feoffer 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.


***The version that I recite here is - I later discovered - incomplete. You can read the whole poem at this website
http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/vangogh/555/Spell/chaos.html ***

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Poem
• Poetry
• Words
• Wordplay
• Funandgames
• Language
• English
• England
• America
• Dictionary

[chuxuezhe1]

Thanks for the wonderful recitation!

The poem is titled, "The Chaos," by G N Trenite. If you Google G N Trenite, the fortunecity link has quite a bit of information about the author and the poem.

[leilajiva]

@chuxuezhe1 Ahh! Thank you! It looks like I missed out quite a few lines. It's by far the best poem about the English language (and all its oddities) that I have ever come across.

[chuxuezhe1]

@leilajiva

It really is a tour de force.

Just wanted to comment again to pass on a couple other items.

-- If you Google [“Why English Is So Hard” + anonymous], the worldwidewords link has another poem you might like.

-- Also, another related item for your ‘lingua file,’ if you collect such things: “Did he believe that Caesar could see the people seized the sea.” I don’t have a source for that one.

(Yikes, I just accidentally hit the thumbs down icon on your comment; was not intended)

[leilajiva]

@chuxuezhe1 Is the latter part of a longer tongue twister? thanks for the links. I love this stuff.

[chuxuezhe1]

@leilajiva So far as I know, that’s all there is to the “Caesar” line; it was part of an essay discussing the fallacy of spelling rules for English.

I had no idea this was such a rich topic for poetry (and prose)…did a little more searching and found a couple more sites with a wealth phonetic/orthographic angst. I can’t put the URLs in, but search:

1. "spellingsociety" + "our strange lingo"

2. "linguistlist" + "pronunciation poem"

I love the items (erroneously) attributed to Shaw and Twain

[leilajiva]

@chuxuezhe1

There's some great stuff out there!

[I] simply cannot get the silly

Inconsistency of whole,

With knoll and goal and bowl and soul....

From My new favorite: Professor P. Dantick's Dictum on Spelling ;-)

[leilajiva]

@OriginalScratch thanks scratch :)

[OriginalScratch]

you bring the words to life