Knottiest Poem
Credits: Unknown. Found floating around the internet originally titled as: "Can You Pronounce This Whole Poem? 90% Of People Can't..."
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 swain, 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 my 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 okay,
When you correctly say croquet.
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Ivy, privy, famous, clamour,
And enamour rhymes 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, won’t, 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,
Feoffer 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,
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, cork and work.
Pronunciation, think of psyche!
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won’t it make you lose your wits,
Writing grouts 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, dough or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup,
My advice is to give up!
.....