Anne-Maries Bloemlezing [index]

The Chaos

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 you'lltear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer,
Pray, console your loving poet,
Make my coat look new, dear, sew it?

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 vague 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, toe.

Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Wholly, holly; signal, signing;
Thames; examining, combining;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
From "desire": desirable - admirable from "admire";
Lumber, plumber; bier bur brier;
Chatham, brougham; renown but known,
Knowledge; done, but gone and tone,
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.

Tortoise, turquoise, chamois-leather,
Reading, Reading, heathen, heather.
This phonetic labyrinth
Gives moss, gross, brook, brooch, ninth, plinth.
Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Banquet is not nearly parquet,
Which is said to rhime with "darky".
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.

Liberty, library; heave and heaven;
Rachel, ache, moustache; eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed;
People, leopard; towed but vowed
Mark the difference, moreover,
Between mover, plover, Dover,
Leeches, breeches; wise, precise;
Chalice but police and lice.
Camel, constable, unstable;
Principle, disciple; label;

Petal, penal and canal;
Wait, surmise, plait, promise; pal.
Suit, suite, run, circuit, conduit
Rhime with "shirk it" and "beyond it",
But it is not hard to tell,
Why it 's pall, mall, but Pall Mall.
Muscle, muscular; goal; iron;
Timber, climber; bullion, lion,
Worm and storm; chaise, chaos, chair;
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
Pussy, hussy and possess.
Desert, but dessert, address.
Golf, wolf; countenance; lieutenants
Hoist, in lieu of flags, left pennants
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Soul but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does 1). Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.

1) No, you are wrong. This is the plural of 'doe'.

Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, Job, Blossom, bosom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Seat, sweat, chaste, caste, Leigh, eight, height;
Put, nut; granite, but unite.
Reefer does not rhyme with deafer.
Feoffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Dull, bull, Geoffrey, George; ate, late.
Hint, pint; senate but sedate;
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.

Tour, but our, and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas!
Sea, idea, guinea, 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, key, quay!
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, receiver.
Never guess - it is not safe;
We say calves, valves, half, but Ralf!
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and eyrie.

Face, but preface, but 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, clerk 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 groats?
It's a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, like rowlock, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.

Don't you think so, reader, rather,
Saying, lather, bather, father?
Finally, which rhymes with enough -
Though, through, plough, cough, hough, or tough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup...
My advice is - give it up!

(De schrijver van het werkje over de uitspraak van het Engelsch "Drop your foreign Accent", droeg mij op, aangezien ik nogal makkelijk rijm - meende hij - voor zijn boek een gedicht te vervaardigen, waarin al de gewone struikelblokken van de Engelsche uitspraak verwerkt moesten worden. Ik kreeg een lijst van ongeveer 450 woorden, alfabetisch gerangschikt, en daarmee moest ik maar aan den gang gaan - asjeblieft! Hier is het. Met toestemming van den schrijver van "Drop" bied ik het alvast mijn velen vloeiend Engelsch sprekenden landgenooten aan, om er zich op een regenachtigen Zondagmiddag mee onledig te houden. Zij zullen merken, dat elk paar regels volkomen zuiver rijm geeft en dat de klemtoon duidelijk door het rhythme aangegeven wordt. Moge het alom schrik en ontsteltenis verspreiden.)

Charivarius, 1922 (?)