A Linguist's Poem

I found this poem on my friend Kristin's Xanga. I like it! It seems fitting that she would like it as well. She spent time in Japan teaching adult conversational English classes! I wish I knew what the original poem looked like because I don't know how the stanzas were set up. At any rate, it definitely shows how confusing English must be for foreigners!
P.S. I don't know what Kristin's Xanga address is. So I linked to her Myspace page.


Hints on Pronunciation for Foreigners

I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?

Others 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—
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 moth is not a 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 dose and rose and lose
Just look them up – and 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!

T.S.W.

(from a letter published in the London Sunday Times, 1/3/65)