English pronunciation test
While most of you non-native speakers of English speak English quite well, there is always room for improvement (of course, the same could be said for every person for any subject, but that is another matter). To that end, I'd like to offer you a poem. Once you've learned to correctly pronounce every word in this poem, you will be speaking English better than 90% of the native English speakers in the world.
If you find it tough going, do not despair, you are not alone: Multi-national personnel at North Atlantic Treaty Organization headquarters near Paris found English to be an easy language ... until they tried to pronounce it. To help them discard an array of accents, the verses below were devised. After trying them, a Frenchman said he'd prefer six months at hard labor to reading six lines aloud. Try them yourself.
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. 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 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. My advice is to give up!!!
(Apparently excerpted from The Chaos by Gerard Nolst Trenit .)
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LOL, well I am sub 90th percentile.
:~)
I wish I could say I was that good.
Where is a math problem so I can feel better about myself......?
Trust me, I cheated on a number of words which I have neither heard before, or could even guess at pronouncing!
Thank goodness I speak a couple of other languages beside English.....I find myself dwelling somewhere in the 50th percentile. Well, maybe not the 50th, 70th is closer. Actually 90th percentile is dead on....LOL
Foeffer sounds like a four letter word.
A lot of English words were added from other languages . I don't know how that helps in pronunciation but it might help in understanding .
Yes, there are many French words among them. The rules for pronouncing French are somewhat different than for English, so that makes the exercise even more challenging.
Since I'm English Ontario Canadian, having majored in English Literature for my B.A., I believe my pronunciation is almost perfect if not so. In fact I have been teaching English pronunciation in China for almost 9 years - and that is a challenge. Due also to having adequate vocabulary, I had no difficulty pronouncing the words, and because of having studied French for 3 years I believe my pronunciation of the many French words was also fine.
Although I start my students out with:
Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked. If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, where's the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper Picked?
...I intend to start using the test in this article - and if they can come close to mastering that after at least a month of daily practice, I'll give them a gift.
By the way, NONE of them rhyme with "enough".
IF we are allowed for regional differences, then I'm ok. If not, I'm a mess!
Such as greasy. Is it Greassy? Or Greazy? We call it, Greazy. Is caramel, Car-mul, or care-a-mel? We call it care-a-mel. Is mirror, as meer, or a mare-or? We call is mare-or.
This was fun! Thanks!!!
Lots of German words, too! Like Kindergarten, Coffee Klatch, Klutz, and, (*wink), Volkswagon. Except that's Folksvahgon, in German!
We are not ! This is discrimination & abuse . Wrote your congressman & voice a complaint ...
My congressman is not fond of me, and I sincerely doubt that he would give a flying rat's kazip! It's Mitch McConnell, or Rand Paul...
I guess flying rats are a species found in Ky .
My real pet peeve about how some people put an sch sound in words where it doesn't belong. The word straight is one of best examples. It's straight, not schtraight.
OK all those homophones and homographs... and being dyslexic yikes!
Maybe they've had too much to drink, or could it be they forgot to put in their false teeth. That could be their schtick (oops, sorry).
They were raised by substandard Parents.
Terrifying!!
And this is without bringing in regional accents, from Scotland through Texas to Australia...
Imagine this text in a Highland brogue...
Are you homophone phobic ?! {Insert smirk here }