tongue tied

A Series of Linguistic Adventures with Tutu

Pronunciation Poem

I take it you already know

of tough and bough and cough and dough?

Other may stumble, but not you

on hiccough, thorough, laugh, 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--

and 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 mother is not the 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 does and rose and lose,

just look them up with 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, come, I've hardly made a start.

A dreadful language? Man alive.

I'd mastered it when I was five.

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