English Pronunciation is Fun!

or is it more dreadful?

This is yet another poem that highlights some commonly seen pitfalls in English pronunciation. This is definitely much simpler than the Phonetic Labyrinth poem. Nonetheless, it’s not going to be easy at all, unless you pay enough attention to your pronuncation.

I take it you already know
Of tough tʌf and bough baʊ and cough kɒf and dough doʊ?
Others may stumble, but not you
On hiccough ˈhɪkʌp, thorough ˈθʌrə‖ˈθʌroʊ, slough slʌf‖slaʊ‖sluː, and through θruː.
Well don’t! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps.
Beware of heard hɜːrd, a dreadful word
That looks like beard bɪəd but sounds like bird.
And dead ded: it’s said like bed, not bead biːd,
For goodness sake don’t call it deed!
Watch out for meat miːt and great ɡreɪt and threat θret]
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt).
A moth mɒːθ is not a moth as in mother ˈmʌðər
Nor both boʊθ as in bother bɒðər, nor broth brɒːθ as in brother ˈbrʌðər,
And here hɪə is not a match for there ðeə,
Nor dear dɪə and fear fɪə, for bear beə and pear peə.
And then there’s dose doʊs and rose roʊz and lose luːz—
Just look them up—and goose ɡuːs and choose ʧuːz
And cork kɔːrk and work wɜːrk and card kɑːrd and ward wɔːrd
And font fɒnt and front frʌnt and word wɜːrd and sword sɔːrd
And do duː and go ɡoʊ, then thwart θwɔːt and cart kɑːrt,
Come, come! I’ve hardly made a start.
A dreadful language? Why man alive!
I learnt to talk it when I was five.
And yet to write it, the more I tried,
I hadn’t learnt it at fifty-five.

I’m again annotating the keywords with IPA notation, which reveals itself when the mouse pointer hovers over a keyword, here. Have fun!