If you can pronounce correctly every word in this poem, you will be speaking English better than 90% of the native English speakers in the world:
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.
(...)
Read the complete text in: http://www.thepoke.co.uk/2011/12/23/english-pronunciation/
Another interesting and curious site to help you with “the Sounds of English” (learning the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) symbols) :
PHONETIC CHART:
http://www.stuff.co.uk/calcul_nd.htm
http://www.englishclub.com/pronunciation/phonemic-chart-ia.htm
OTHER SITES ABOUT ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION:
QUIZZES ABOUT HOW GOOD IS YOUR PRONUNCIATION:
BBC Learning English (Grammar, Vocabulary & Pronunciation):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/grammar/pron/quiz/quiz1/
ENGLISH PHONETIC EXERCISES:
http://www.agendaweb.org/phonetic.html
FREE ONLINE TALKING DICTIONARY OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION:
http://www.ivona.com/en/
PRONUNCIATION TIPS:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6XZdV_8BZ4&feature=share&list=PL885D0C1132105AA1
Comments
In fact, I’m the one who should be thanking you for coming up with that challenge. I really enjoyed doing it, believe you me! I’m glad that you heard the whole poem being read aloud at last and it happened to be through my voice recording. Thanks again for the wonderful opportunity!
woow Gabriel Sowrian, amazing job! :D Thanks for accepting my 'challenge'. Actually I'm not able to do it myself, but since i knew this poem I wanted to hear it read it aloud, so thanks a heap! :)
@ Y.N
I appreciate it!
I failed :p
Hello, Mary!
Lol! I didn’t expect at all that you would throw down the gauntlet to read an unthinkable poem when you put in your friend request. However, I’m willing to lay my neck on the block as long as my new-found friend is entertained! Okay, I’ve split my voice recording into two audio files as the audio player could only accommodate a maximum of seven minutes long recording per upload. Well! You can click HERE to open the poem on a separate window if you want to follow my recitation with the text. Enjoy!
Part 1
Part 2
Note: I would like to invite my fellow EC members to listen to my voice recordings of some other difficult to pronounce words. See you guys there! Thank you!
@ Lucy
It’s not necessary to be a native-speaker of English to pronounce those words! Even non-native speakers of the language could do it if they know the 44 sounds that make up the words in speech and could read the phonetic transcriptions. ;-) !
Do not worry, Mary. Let's see if we can find a native who helps us with this. I hope so. Keep your fingers crossed, lol :)
I'd like to do that Lucy, but i'm afraid i'm not so good with pronunciation and this poem is too hard... and i'm shy too :D
You could read the poem for us and put it here, it would help us a lot, thanks in advance. :)
more or less noas... I'm mean like that :(
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