could no longer hold myself back - and since this thread is waaayyy OT anyways: here's my favorite poem about the Joys of the English Language... :-) Apparently it's an excerpt from The Chaos by Gerard Nolst Trenité from 1922!
Try to read the text out loud and count how often you see youself stumble or at least amazed by the different ways to pronounce the same written word, or how words that have a totally different spelling are pronounced exactly the same... :-)) Cheers, Guido The Joys Of The English Language Read it aloud, you'd be amazed! Once you've learned to correctly pronounce every word in the following 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: Multinational personnel at North Atlantic Treaty Organisation 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 labour to reading six lines aloud. Try them yourself. English is Tough Stuff 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 you 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 and aunt, Font, front, wont, want, grand and grant, Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger, And 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, moreoever, 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, bout 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 and 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 and 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!! ---- The Author of the poem is supposed to be an English teacher named G. Nolst Trenité in the city of Haarlem. Trenité wrote articles under the pen name CHARIVARIOUS and a little booklet entitled "Drop Your English Accent," in which the poem appeared. see also: http://www.idallen.com/ncf/english.html -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of joe Sent: Sonntag, 23. April 2006 20:16 To: ActiveDir@mail.activedir.org Subject: RE: going waaaayyy OT [ActiveDir] stupid ldap queries Completely agree, but you would be amazed at the people who like to get their panties in a bunch either way you use it. If I recall my high school Latin correctly (very possibly not as it has been a bit), Virii was the plural of vir which was husband or possibly man (all of the references to it I recall were to married couples). Me personally, I don't care, I will use whatever words that get the point across. The only hard and fast rule about language IMO is that a word means exactly what people trying to communicate agree on that it means. Doesn't much matter outside of that as words are simply used for communicating ideas. When people start getting their drawers bunched up and arguing over words and spelling I sit in the corner and titter wondering if we will ever get back on point. Spelling and pronunciation of words is right up there with top versus bottom posting arguments and complaining that something isn't fair. :) joe -- O'Reilly Active Directory Third Edition - http://www.joeware.net/win/ad3e.htm -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of AdamT Sent: Thursday, April 20, 2006 12:22 PM To: ActiveDir@mail.activedir.org Subject: Re: going waaaayyy OT [ActiveDir] stupid ldap queries On 4/20/06, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Ditto viruses and virii. ... > Being a bit of a pedant, I have to point out that virii is neither good English, nor good Latin: http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/virii.html -- AdamT A: Because it breaks the logical sequence of discussion Q: Why is top-posting a bad thing? 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