Newsgroup: it.cultura.linguistica.inglese
Titolo: English Pronunciation

Questo vale anche per coloro che sono di madrelingua inglese. Enjoy!
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: Multi-national personnel at North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO) headquarters near Paris found English to be
an easy language...until they tried to pronounce it. To help them
discard an array of accents, the verses below were devised. After
trying them, a Frenchman said he'd prefer six months at hard labor to
reading six lines aloud. Try them yourself.
English Pronunciation Test
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, Melpomen, mankind. 
Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mound 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; clamor
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 clangor.
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 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, Senate, 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 same of cup.
My advice is to give up!!! 
* Author Unknown

 ha scritto nel messaggio
news:929141be.04091...@posting.google.com...

OH MY GOWD. (Sorry for the spell)

 OH MY GOWD. (Sorry for the spell)
by heart, but I'm quite sure our FAQ includes both the poem and a couple of
hints about quoting...
believe me, a good reading. definitely.

 Didn't you like the way I quoted...? Sorry... but where's the FAQ?
http://web.tiscali.it/peltio/TheRealm/index.html
-- 
Ciao,
Anna

 hints about quoting...
we should definitely add this link to our faq:
http://alnitak.ctt.it/iltuodovere.jpg

 Anna
Thanks, Anna.