Off topic: No wonder English is so hard to learn ... Thread poster: Aurora Humarán (X)
|
|---|
Aurora Humarán (X) 
Argentina
Local time: 16:07
English to Spanish
+ ...
Have a nice Wednesday!  Au
* We polish the Polish furniture.
* He could lead if he would get the lead out.
* A farm can produce produce.
* The dump was so full it had to refuse refuse.
* The soldier decided to desert in the desert.
* The present is a good time to present the present.
* At the Army base, a bass was painted on the head of a bass dru... See more Have a nice Wednesday! Au
* We polish the Polish furniture.
* He could lead if he would get the lead out.
* A farm can produce produce.
* The dump was so full it had to refuse refuse.
* The soldier decided to desert in the desert.
* The present is a good time to present the present.
* At the Army base, a bass was painted on the head of a bass drum.
* The dove dove into the bushes.
* I did not object to the object.
* The insurance for the invalid was invalid.
* The bandage was wound around the wound.
* There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
* They were too close to the door to close it.
* The buck does funny things when the does are present.
* They sent a sewer down to stitch the tear in the sewer line.
* To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
* The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
* After a number of Novocain injections, my jaw got number.
* I shed a tear when I saw the tear in my clothes.
* I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
* How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?
* I spent last evening evening out a pile of dirt.
[ This Message was edited by: amh on 2003-05-14 12:32] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Parrot
Spain
Local time: 21:07
Spanish to English
+ ...
| Find the 8 different pronunciations of "ough" | May 14, 2003 |
Bough, through, ought, though... have fun!
| | | | Kimmy
Local time: 05:07
Italian to English
+ ...
| what about...... | May 14, 2003 |
rough?
Then the metnal block steps in!
| | | | | I found this a couple of years ago on the Internet | May 14, 2003 |
Subject: English as she is spake!
\"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 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 verse... See more Subject: English as she is spake!
\"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 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 Is Tough Stuff
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, 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!!!
-- Author Unknown
▲ Collapse
| | |
|
|
|
| And the pronunciation of | May 14, 2003 |
good, blood, pool, door.
And the use of \"that\":
He told me that that \"that\" that the journalist wrote was utterly wrong.
...
Hugs
Claudia
| | | | Jack Doughty
United Kingdom
Local time: 20:07
Russian to English
+ ...
In memoriam | How were the clothes torn? | May 14, 2003 |
Aurora, you shed a tear when you saw the tear in your clothes - had they been torn on a saw in the shed?
Claudia, a punctuation test for you.
1. in jack and jill went up the hill there are spaces between jack and and and and and jill
2. jack where jill had had had had had had had had had had had higher approval from the teacher
[ This Message was edited by: jdoughty on 2003-05-14 20:58]
| | | | Rod Darby (X)
Ghana
Local time: 19:07
German to English
+ ...
| getting back to "ough" | May 15, 2003 |
I\'ve remembered cough and thorough, which brings us to seven . . .
[addsig]
| | | | Aurora Humarán (X)
Argentina
Local time: 16:07
English to Spanish
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER | a DREADFUL language?!?!?!? | May 15, 2003 |
I posted this poem more than a year ago but it is worth rereading it...
Aurora
English Pronunciation
I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you
On hiccough, thorough, lough and through?
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps?
<... See more I posted this poem more than a year ago but it is worth rereading it...
Aurora
English Pronunciation
I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you
On hiccough, thorough, lough 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,
Not 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 to 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.
▲ Collapse
| | |
|
|
|
two2tango
Argentina
Local time: 16:07
Member
English to Spanish
+ ...
| one out of two | May 15, 2003 |
Quote:
On 2003-05-14 20:53, jdoughty wrote:
Claudia, a punctuation test for you.
1. in jack and jill went up the hill there are spaces between jack and and and and and jill
Nice Stuff Jack! I hope my good friend Claudia will not mind my interference:
in \"jack and jill went up the hill\" there are spaces between \"jack\" and \"and\", and (between) \"a... See more Quote:
On 2003-05-14 20:53, jdoughty wrote:
Claudia, a punctuation test for you.
1. in jack and jill went up the hill there are spaces between jack and and and and and jill
Nice Stuff Jack! I hope my good friend Claudia will not mind my interference:
in \"jack and jill went up the hill\" there are spaces between \"jack\" and \"and\", and (between) \"and\" and \"jill\".
Still thinking the second one.
Regards,
Enrique ▲ Collapse
| | | | two2tango
Argentina
Local time: 16:07
Member
English to Spanish
+ ...
| This one was harder! | May 17, 2003 |
Quote:
On 2003-05-14 20:53, jdoughty wrote:
2. jack where jill had had had had had had had had had had had higher approval from the teacher
Jack, where Jill had had \"had\", had had \"had had\". \"Had had\" had had higher approval from the teacher.
Hi Jack, Regards to Jill!
Enrique
| | | | Elena Sgarbo (X)
Italian to English
+ ...
| Hat off to Jack and Enrique! :-) | May 17, 2003 |
You guys made me smile
[/quote]
Jack, where Jill had had \"had\", had had \"had had\". \"Had had\" had had higher approval from the teacher.
Hi Jack, Regards to Jill!
Enrique
[/quote]
...And the second iteration could also be unscrambled as:
Where Jill had had \"had\", Jack had had \"had had\". \"Had had\" had had higher... See more You guys made me smile
[/quote]
Jack, where Jill had had \"had\", had had \"had had\". \"Had had\" had had higher approval from the teacher.
Hi Jack, Regards to Jill!
Enrique
[/quote]
...And the second iteration could also be unscrambled as:
Where Jill had had \"had\", Jack had had \"had had\". \"Had had\" had had higher approval from the teacher.
HGWE, everyone! ▲ Collapse
| | | | Jack Doughty
United Kingdom
Local time: 20:07
Russian to English
+ ...
In memoriam | ¡Felicidades, Quique! | May 17, 2003 |
I was wondering if I would have to give you a hint about it being a choice of tenses - direct past or pluperfect. Which got me wondering about what the difference is between pluscuamperfecto and pretérito anteriór. But I\'m glad you cracked it on your own.
| | | | To report site rules violations or get help, contact a site moderator: You can also contact site staff by submitting a support request » No wonder English is so hard to learn ... | CafeTran Espresso | You've never met a CAT tool this clever!
Translate faster & easier, using a sophisticated CAT tool built by a translator / developer.
Accept jobs from clients who use Trados, MemoQ, Wordfast & major CAT tools.
Download and start using CafeTran Espresso -- for free
Buy now! » |
| | Wordfast Pro | Translation Memory Software for Any Platform
Exclusive discount for ProZ.com users!
Save over 13% when purchasing Wordfast Pro through ProZ.com. Wordfast is the world's #1 provider of platform-independent Translation Memory software. Consistently ranked the most user-friendly and highest value
Buy now! » |
|
| | | | X Sign in to your ProZ.com account... | | | | | |
Login to reply/comment 
