I'm posting this time a poem whose author I don't know anything about, nor even if that's their real name. Though I've tried hard to find out who wrote this, I've had no luck. It seems there are differen versions on the internet, under different names or just by an unknown author. In any case, I think it's a good poem to post on a blog about the English language, especially if it isn't your mother tongue.
English
I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough.
Others may stumble, but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, slough and through.
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps?
Beware of heard, a dreadful word,
That looks like beard and sounds like bird.
And dead--it's said like bed, not bead;
For goodness sake, don't call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat.
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt.)
A moth is not a moth in mother;
Nor both in bother, broth in brother.
And here is not a match for there,
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear;
And then there's dose and rose and lose--
Just look them up--and goose and choose;
And cork and work and card and ward,
And font and front and word and sword.
And do and go, then thwart and cart.
Come, come, I've hardly made a start.
A dreadful language? Why man alive,
I learned to talk it when I was five;
And yet to write it, the more I try,
I haven't learned it at fifty-five.
~ Richard Keogh?
This poem, which I think is quite good, is about how difficult English pronunciation is. Because of this, I'm posting a lesson by LearnEnglish1, a native British English speaker who teaches pronunciation through Youtube videos. Here he is using a slightly different version of the poem but it's just as good.
