#122: The Pronunciation Poem
A timeless exercise in English pronunciation
Transcript
Hi again, and welcome back to Seattle Learning Academy's American English pronunciation podcast. My name is Mandy, and this is our 122nd episode.
This episode is a special request from a special Podcast listener. Raafat in Egypt notified us of a number of typos on past transcripts pages, and this is our thank you to him.
This poem has been around for a long time, and I've seen a number of different versions of it. I like this version because it is relatively short, yet still provides a lot of different pronunciation topics. It isn't surprising that this poem was written by a non-native English speaker. Gerard Nolst Trenite was born in the Netherlands in 1870. He published this poem 50 years later with the original title The Chaos .
I'll read the poem first, then comment on it. 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, or brother, And here is not a match for there, Nor dear and fear for bear and pear, And then there's doze 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 and thwart and cart- Come, I've hardly made a start! A dreadful language? Man alive! I'd learned to speak it when I was five! And yet to write it, the more I sigh, I'll not learn how 'til the day I die. So let's look at what Trenite wrote here. I take it you already know Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Of those words, bough is probably the least well known. Bough b-o-u-g-h pronounced the same as the verb bow b-o-w. A bough , b-o-u-g-h, is a branch of a tree.
Then:
Others may stumble but not you On hiccough, thorough, slough and through.
Hiccup, spelled h-i-c-c-o-u-g-h is antiquated, and you aren't likely to see it spelled that way in modern writing. Thank goodness for that!
A slough , s-l-o-u-g-h is another word for swamp . In the United States, the word swamp is much more likely.
Later we have:
Beware of heard, a dreadful word That looks like beard and sounds like bird.
I like these two lines. The words heard , word , and bird still rhyme - with each other - not with the word beard . What sound is in the middle of the words heard , word , and bird ? We call it schwa+r .
The next four lines are also still current, and all use words common to life in the United States today:
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).
Remember, the letters ea can be pronounced as either a short e , as in the words dead and threat or a long e as in the words dream and meat . You cannot assume one pronunciation over the other. I'll tell you how you can learn more in a little bit! A moth is not a moth in mother, Nor both in bother, broth, or brother,
Here we have a bunch of words that originated in Old English (except both , from Middle English and bother , which is relatively new and entered English is the late 17th century). Why is the th sound voiced in mother , bother and brother but unvoiced in moth , both , and broth ? According to the John Wells's Phonetic Blog, it is because in Old English, th sounds were voiced when the th is between vowel sounds. Okay, since the word bother is not Old English, I must guess that its voiced th is following words like mother and brother in their voicing.
Later we have:
And cork and work and card and ward And font and front and word and sword, And do and go and thwart and cart- Come, I've hardly made a start! Here we have three words involving a w sound : work , ward , and word . You'll notice that a number of the vowel sound lessons on Pronuncian show a spelling with a w in parentheses. This is to tell you that vowel sounds are often pronounced differently when a w is involved in the spelling. Sword , with its silent w , is the most surprising pronunciation of those words.
A dreadful language? Man alive! I'd learned to speak it when I was five! And yet to write it, the more I sigh, I'll not learn how 'til the day I die. Even though I'm a native speaker, I'm also a self-proclaimed horrible speller, so I'd agree with that! Now, remember that I mentioned that I would tell you how you can learn more about the ea spelling ? Actually, this is a way for you to learn more about anything I talk about in these podcasts.
Pronuncian now has a search function built into the site! It isn't on all of our pages yet, but it's on quite a few. So, if I do a quick little search for ea spelling , I will see this page. Oh, and look, right on top I see that the ea spelling is mentioned on the long e / short e video podcast. Great!
Let's take a look. Now I am ready to learn more. Yay.
Lastly today, don't forget that you can help support this podcast by signing up for a free 14-day Audible trial. Visit www.pronuncian.com/audible to learn how to get your free audiobook.
Transcripts for this show can be found at www.pronuncian.com/podcast. If you notice an error on any of our transcripts or anywhere else on Pronuncian, please let know!
That's all for today everyone. This has been a Seattle Learning Academy digital publication. SLA is where the world comes to learn.
Thanks for listening.
Bye-bye.
