Sunday, December 28, 2003


English Is Write Difficult

The King's English Language
I take it you already know
Of tough and bough
and cough and dough?

Others may stumble, but not you
On hiccough, through,
slough and thorough.

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 the moth in mother,
Nor both in bother,
nor broth in brother.

And there 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, then thwart and cart
Come, come, I've hardly made a start!
A dreadful language? Why sakes alive!
I'd learned to talk it when I was five.
And yet to write it, the more I tried,
I hadn't learned it at fifty-five.

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