By Jimmy Rogers (@me)
Contributing Writer, [GAS]
Need a little mental booster to wake you up today? Here’s a linguistic challenge for you!
In 1920, Dutchman Gerard Nolst Trenité (1870-1946) published the following poem in one of his textbooks about accents. It’s called “The Chaos”* and it demonstrates how difficult it is to pronounce all of the strangely-spelled words in the English language. Here is a small excerpt of the fairly lengthy poem, try to read it OUT LOUD to yourself (italicized words are either spelled or pronounced differently):
“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, Susy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy;Tear in eye, your dress you’ll tear;
Queer, fair seer, hear my prayer.Pray, console your loving poet,
Make my coat look new, dear, sew it!…”
There’s a GREAT DEAL MORE, so head on over to The Spelling Society’s full text of the poem. The further you get the harder the words get to pronounce. I found my brain and my tongue beginning to tire about half way through!
After reading the whole thing OUT LOUD, how well did you do? What words did you stumble over or not recognize? Post ‘um below in the comments!
*note: this is an updated version, edited and corrected by The Spelling Society
Related posts:
- Me, Myself, and My
- Academic wants us all to talk like an AOL chatroom
- Wednesday Geeky Pics: Emoticons in the Wild
