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; clamor And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb, Doll and droll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger, Neither does devour with clangour.
Soul 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, knob, bosom, transom, oath.
Through the differences seem little, We say actual, but also 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 it paling, stout and spiky?
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 give it up!!!

We'll begin with a box, and the plural is boxes; but the plural of ox became oxen not oxes.
One fowl is a goose, but two are called geese, yet the plural of moose should never be meese.
You may find a lone mouse or a nest full of mice; yet the plural of house is houses, not hice.
If the plural of man is always called men, why shouldn't the plural of pan be called pen?
If I spoke of my foot and show you my feet, and I give you a boot, would a pair be called beets.
If one is a tooth and a whole set are teeth, why shouldn't the plural of booth be called beeth?
Then one may be that, and three would be those, yet hat in the plural would never be hose, and the plural of cat is cats, not cose.
We speak of a brother and also of brethren, but though we say mother, we never say methren.
Then the masculine pronouns are he, his and him, but imagine the feminine, she, shis and shim.

1. The bandage was wound around the wound.
2. The farm was used to produce produce.
3. The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
4. We must polish the Polish furniture.
5. He could lead if he would get the lead out.
6. The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
7. Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.
8. At the Army base, a bass was painted on the head of a bass drum.
9. When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
10. I did not object to the object.
11. The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
12. There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
13. They were too close to the door to close it.
14. The buck does funny things when the does are present.
15. A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
16. To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
17. The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
18. After a number of Novocain injections, my jaw got number.
19. Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.
20. I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
21. How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?
22. I spent last evening evening out a pile of dirt.
    
    

Screwy pronunciations can mess up your mind! For example...If you have a rough cough, climbing can be tough when going through the bough on a tree! Let's face it — English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England.

We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig. And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham? Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it? If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? Sometimes I think all the folks who grew up speaking English should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what other language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell? How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which an alarm goes off by going on. If Dad is Pop, how's come Mom isn't Mop? Enough Already!

1. Those who jump off a bridge in Paris are in Seine.
2. A backward poet writes inverse.
3. A man's home is his castle, in a manor of speaking.
4. Dijon vu - the same mustard as before.
5. Practice safe eating - always use condiments.
6. Shotgun wedding: A case of wife or death.
7. A man needs a mistress just to break the monogamy.
8. A hangover is the wrath of grapes.
9. Dancing cheek-to-cheek is really a form of floor play.
10. Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?
11. Condoms should be used on every conceivable occasion.
12. Reading while sunbathing makes you well red.
13. When two egotists meet, it's an I for an I.
14. A bicycle can't stand on its own because it is two tired.
15. What's the definition of a will? It's a dead giveaway.
16. Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
17. In democracy your vote counts. In feudalism your count votes.
18. She was engaged to a boyfriend with a wooden leg but broke it off.
19. A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion.
20. If you don't pay your exorcist, you get repossessed.
21. With her marriage, she got a new name and a dress.
22. When a clock is hungry, it goes back four seconds.
23. The man who fell into an upholstery machine is fully recovered.
24. You feel stuck with your debt if you can't budge it.
25. Local Area Network in Australia: the LAN down under.
26. He often broke into song because he couldn't find the key.
27. Every calendar's days are numbered.
28. A lot of money is tainted - It taint yours and it taint mine.
29. A boiled egg in the morning is hard to beat.
30. He had a photographic memory that was never developed.
31. A plateau is a high form of flattery.
32. A midget fortune-teller who escapes from prison is a small medium at large.
33. hose who get too big for their britches will be exposed in the end.
34. Once you've seen one shopping center, you've seen a mall.
35. Bakers trade bread recipes on a knead-to-know basis.
36. Santa's helpers are subordinate clauses.
37. Acupuncture is a jab well done.
    
    

Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
Its rare lea ever wrong.

Eye have run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleased two no
Its letter perfect awl the weigh
My chequer tolled me sew.

25. "Rhythms" is the longest English word without the normal vowels, a, e, i, o, or u.

24. Excluding derivatives, there are only two words in English that end -shion and (though many words end in this sound). These are cushion and fashion.

23. "THEREIN" is a seven-letter word that contains thirteen words spelled using consecutive letters: the, he, her, er, here, I, there, ere, rein, re, in, therein, and herein.

22. There is only one common word in English that has five vowels in a row: queueing.

21. Soupspoons is the longest word that consists entirely of letters from the second half of alphabet.

20. "Almost" is the longest commonly used word in the English language with all the letters in alphabetical order.

19. The longest uncommon word whose letters are in alphabetical order is the eight-letter Aegilops (a grass genus).

18. The longest common single-word palindromes are deified, racecar, repaper, reviver, and rotator.

17. "One thousand" contains the letter A, but none of the words from one to nine hundred ninety-nine has an A.

16. "The sixth sick sheik’s sixth sheep’s sick" is said to be the toughest tongue twister in English.

15. Cwm (pronounced "koom", defined as a steep-walled hollow on a hillside) is a rare case of a word used in English in which w is the nucleus vowel, as is crwth (pronounced "krooth", a type of stringed instrument). Despite their origins in Welsh, they are accepted English words.

14. "Asthma" and "isthmi" are the only six-letter words that begin and end with a vowel and have no other vowels between.

13. The nine-word sequence I, in, sin, sing, sting, string, staring, starting (or starling), startling can be formed by successively adding one letter to the previous word.

12. "Underground" and "underfund" are the only words in the English language that begin and end with the letters "und."

11. "Stewardesses" is the longest word that can be typed with only the left hand.

10. Antidisestablishmentarianism listed in the Oxford English Dictionary, was considered the longest English word for quite a long time, but today the medical term pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis is usually considered to have the title, despite the fact that it was coined to provide an answer to the question "What is the longest English word?".

9. "Dreamt" is the only English word that ends in the letters "mt".

8. There are many words that feature all five regular vowels in alphabetical order, the commonest being abstemious, adventitious, facetious.

7. The superlatively long word honorificabilitudinitatibus (27 letters) alternates consonants and vowels.

6. "Fickleheaded" and "fiddledeedee" are the longest words consisting only of letters in the first half of the alphabet.

5. The two longest words with only one of the six vowels including y are the 15-letter defenselessness and respectlessness.

4. "Forty" is the only number which has its letters in alphabetical order. "One" is the only number with its letters in reverse alphabetical order.

3. Bookkeeper is the only word that has three consecutive doubled letters.

2. Despite the assertions of a well-known puzzle, modern English does not have three common words ending in -gry. Angry and hungry are the only ones.

1. "Ough" can be pronounced in eight different ways. The following sentence contains them all: "A rough-coated, dough-faced ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough, coughing and hiccoughing thoughtfully".