Grammar crimes: the words and phrases that are…

Artemis

2/25/2026, 9:30:16 PM

Diana, If you can pronounce correctly each word in this poem, you will be speaking English better than 90% of Native English speakers in the World. After trying a verse a Frenchman said he'd prefer 6 months of hard labor to reading 6 lines aloud. Dearest creature in creation, Study English pronunciation. I will teach you in my verse Sounds like corpse, crops, horse, and worse. I will keep you, Suzy, busy, Make your head with heat grow dizzy. Tear in your eye, your dress will tear. So shall I! Oh hear my prayer. Just compare heart, beard, and head. 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; 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 or 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, won't, want, grand, and grant, Shoes, goes, does. Now say finger, And then singer, ginger, linger, Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge, and gauge, Marriage, foilage, mirage, and age. Quest does not rhyme, Nor does fury sound like bury. Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth. Job, nob, bosom, ransom, oath. Though the difference seem little We say actual but victual. Refer does not rhyme with defear. Foeffer, and zephyr, heifer. Mint, pint, Senate and sedate; Dull, bull, and George ate late. Scenic, Arbic, Pacific, Science, conscience, scientific. Liberty, library, heave, and heaven, Rachel, ache, mustache, 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 earie. Face but preface, 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 goats 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 3 Exclamation mark The Chaos by Gerard Nolst Ternite', ,