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The Chaos
a poem about English pronunciation 
Try to read aloud! 
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!!!   
By Charivarius >

Someone burn this poem. I was like fuck my life towards the end. >

God it soooo long >

That's what she said >

Liar >

That's what I call her >

Context is super important. We are taught i before e, except after c. However, this shortcut is incorrect for 65% of all words. Weird, huh? So why teach it? The context comes in since we only use about 30% of those “rule breakers” in actual practice. So for most intents and purposes, the rule holds up. 
Thus, as we show obeisancies to the language, we must also acquiesce and give sufficient weight to the belief that this is not a science, but simply a way to perceive simple spelling tricks used to more easily teach our kids and foreign neighbors. >

People always forget the second half of that rule. “I before E except after C, or in sounding like A as in neighbor or weigh.” >

“Or on weekends, and holidays, and all across May. And you’ll never be right no matter what you say!” >

"That's a hard rule...that's a rough rule!" >

I'm learning French on Duolingo and just as extra phone time learning English from French. The number of times it corrects my English is shocking. Usually resulting in me shouting, "It's the same thing."
I have a sore head.  Wrong.
Correct answer: I have a headache. 
I got quite shouty at that one. >

Maybe it's a regional thing but tbh "I have a sore head" to me sounds like you bumped it or something not that you have a headache. I wouldn't call it wrong though. >

Exactly. It not how I would say it, but that's not the same thing as it being incorrect. >

I like how in English, Lead rhymes with Read, and Lead rhymes with Read, but Lead doesn't rhyme with Read, and Lead doesn't rhyme with Read. >

No you can be perfectly fluent in English and have no idea what rules you can and cannot ignore. The difference between a native speaker and a foreign fluent person is knowing which rules you can ignore. >

You completely missed the point of the post. As a native/fluent speaker, YOU get to define the rules. If you manage to get a bunch of others to collectively do something “incorrect” with you, then it becomes correct. >

No, then it becomes slang/dialect. Despite regional slang/dialect, there are grammar rules to the English language that don't change despite how people speak. >

Okay, but how do you think those rules came about?
What's the difference between slang and a part of language/ "the rules"?
The answer is just time and more acceptance.
The rules weren't handed down from above. >


What's the difference between slang and a part of language/ "the rules"?

The difference is what is formally taught and what is naturally acquired. >

Okay then, we'll go another step.
Where do you think the things they formally teach come from? English isn't taught now the same way it was hundreds of years ago, so that change has to come from somewhere. >

Yes, English and how it's taught can change over centuries based on how people speak, but that's not my point. What I'm saying is there aren't different grammar textbooks taught in schools based on the dialect of English of a certain region. >

So i speak English fluently, Chinese conversationally fluently.
People wanna shit on Chinese as a language because there’s no alphabet and it “seems really hard to learn” but I swear I’d so much rather it be English to Chinese than the other way around. Chinese grammar is simple and makes sense, but I’ve been able to speak English for my entire life and still manage to fuck up grammar on occasion. >

FMU, Chinese has the easiest grammar. 
English is the worst language out there, albeit the most widespread. >

TLDR: lots of the same sounding words with contradictions and 4th wall breaking to talk to the audience. >

There are mistakes that will make you seem like a foreigner, and mistakes that native speakers make. >

More like knowing that the rules are bullshit.
English went around mugging other languages and stealing grammatical elements.
Also, apparently spelling bees are pretty isolated to English, because other languages' spelling/sound rules are consistent enough that "just spell it how it sounds" is all it takes. >

I am reading a book right now that is a little older and they still use the "you can't end a sentence with a preposition" rule. It makes for some extremely awkward sentences. I am glad that that rule is falling out of grace. >

what's even a preposition lol >

It it the category of words that you can't end a sentence with - excuse me, with which you cannot end a sentence.
Words like on, off, with, towards, about, behind, below, above. Words that indicate a relationship to a noun. A preposition is a word or group of words used before a noun, pronoun, or noun phrase to show direction, time, place, location, spatial relationships, or to introduce an object.
But because the prefix 'pre' means 'before', there were and are still a lot of people who will say something as to come after it and therefore it can't come at the end of a sentence. They would not say "This is the movie I told you about!” but “This is the movie about which I told you!” >

being fluent in english is being able to express your thoughts in the least possible amount of words >

got it