Newsgroup: it.cultura.linguistica.inglese
Titolo: Pronunziazione inglese un esercizio

Questo messaggio ricevuto dal genero sembra adatto a questo gruppo.   Se
avete domande sulle pronunziazioni voi potete scrivermi.
Martino
Da Charley:
I just received this and thought it was great.
Your mother would have liked it, I think.
In VERBATIM; THE LANGUAGE QUARTERLY, for Autumn 1989, pages 8-10, there
is a
letter from a man in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. Mr. Jacob de Jager
says he was born in Holland in 1923 and received his education through
senior high school in that country. As he studied English, he and others
were required to learn by heart for recitation a poem called "The
Chaos." He
says the poem is by an English teacher named G. Nolst Trenit in the city of
Haarlem. Trenit  wrote articles under the pen name CHARIVARIOUS and a little
booklet entitled "Drop Your English Accent," in which the poem appeared.
 
http://ebbs.english.vt.edu/exper/mosser/classes/hel/chaos.html
TEST YOUR SKILL
Once you've learned to correctly pronounce every word in the following poem,
you will be speaking English better than 90% of the native English
speakers in the world.  If you find it tough going, do not despair, you are
not alone.  Try them yourself.  After trying them, a Frenchman said he'd
prefer six months at hard labor to reading six lines 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 plague 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!!!

 Martino
Adatto lo e' di sicuro
In realta' Loki l'aveva gia' postato qualche settimana fa, giusto prima
della tua comparsa nel ng.
Cionondimeno,il tuo messaggio ha la meritoria funzione di chiarire l'origine
dell'autore, che aveva suscitato degli interrogativi rimasti irrisolti.
Ciao, spero che Giovannino Guareschi ti sia diventato più simpatico negli
ultimi tempi.
Giorgio