Here is a poem to
Practice English Pronunciation. If you can pronounce all these words correctly,
your pronunciation is correct.
Dearest creature in
creation,
Study English
pronunciation.
I will teach you in my
verse
Sounds like corpse,
corps, horse, and worse.
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!!!
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