http://phd.pp.ru/Texts/fun/english-poem.txt

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> http://phd.pp.ru/Texts/fun/english-poem.txt

Genius. One or two of the couplets don't seem to rhyme properly - I wonder if
that's not deliberate, or perhaps dependent on personal accent!

I can indeed see this being murder for non-native, and challenging for most
native English speakers...

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Bill Pragnell wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> http://phd.pp.ru/Texts/fun/english-poem.txt
> 
> Genius. One or two of the couplets don't seem to rhyme properly - I wonder if
> that's not deliberate, or perhaps dependent on personal accent!
> 
> I can indeed see this being murder for non-native, and challenging for most
> native English speakers...
> 
> 

I got stuck on a few homographs, and speed reading caught me a few
times. Then I got to ". . . Four . . . Arkansas".

I can not make those rhyme without butchering one or the other. Either
Ar-ken-saw becomes Ar-kens-ur, or Four becomes Fou. Maybe there is a
homograph of 'four' that I am missing? Or maybe I just need a proper
Queen's English accent to get that one.

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After trying to get my tongue untangled,

(which out of my mouth now dangled),

On to YouTube did I hie,

And behold, there did espy:

A young maiden, bright and fair,

With golden shimmer in her hair,

Undauntedly she offered battle,

Against the poem she'd test her mettle,

And victorious she has been,

A true pronunciation queen.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1spqX4sIDo

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Darren New wrote:
> http://phd.pp.ru/Texts/fun/english-poem.txt

Words therein with which I'm not familiar:
sward, ague, Terpsichore, Balmoral, chalet(? might've seen it), 
clangour, query doesn't rhyme with very? thought it did, Foeffer, (not 
sure what a chaise is), aver, ere is right e'er, groats

(I used to think lichen was pronounced with ch as in chop when I was a 
wee lad)

--
Tim Cook
http://empyrean.freesitespace.net

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"Tim Cook" <z99### [at] gmailcom> wrote in message 
news:4ad9672e$1@news.povray.org...
> Darren New wrote:
>> http://phd.pp.ru/Texts/fun/english-poem.txt
>
> Words therein with which I'm not familiar:
> sward, ague, Terpsichore, Balmoral, chalet(? might've seen it), clangour, 
> query doesn't rhyme with very? thought it did, Foeffer, (not sure what a 
> chaise is), aver, ere is right e'er, groats
>
> (I used to think lichen was pronounced with ch as in chop when I was a wee 
> lad)
>

That’s the “Trouble with Lichen” ;)

-- 

Stephen

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"Sabrina Kilian" <ski### [at] vtedu> wrote in message 
news:4ad934db$1@news.povray.org...

> I can not make those rhyme without butchering one or the other. Either
> Ar-ken-saw becomes Ar-kens-ur, or Four becomes Fou. Maybe there is a
> homograph of 'four' that I am missing? Or maybe I just need a proper
> Queen's English accent to get that one.

As Bill said it depends on personal accent and I'll add regional and class 
(there I go again :) to that.
Four and Ar-ken-saw do rhyme if you use a posh RP (Received Pronunciation) 
English accent (fou-ar and saw-ar).

The girl reading the poem in TC's post did really well IMO.

-- 

Stephen

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Tim Cook wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
>> http://phd.pp.ru/Texts/fun/english-poem.txt
> 
> Words therein with which I'm not familiar:
> sward, ague, Terpsichore, Balmoral, chalet(? might've seen it),
> clangour, query doesn't rhyme with very? thought it did, Foeffer, (not
> sure what a chaise is), aver, ere is right e'er, groats
> 
> (I used to think lichen was pronounced with ch as in chop when I was a
> wee lad)
> 
> -- 
> Tim Cook
> http://empyrean.freesitespace.net

...and to add a couple of names
Cholmondely - pron. Chumley
Featherstonehaugh - pron. Fanshaw

I'm sure Stephen could add a host of Scottish novelties

John
-- 
"Eppur si muove" - Galileo Galilei

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Stephen wrote:
> "Sabrina Kilian" <ski### [at] vtedu> wrote in message
> news:4ad934db$1@news.povray.org...
> 
>> I can not make those rhyme without butchering one or the other. Either
>> Ar-ken-saw becomes Ar-kens-ur, or Four becomes Fou. Maybe there is a
>> homograph of 'four' that I am missing? Or maybe I just need a proper
>> Queen's English accent to get that one.
> 
> As Bill said it depends on personal accent and I'll add regional and
> class (there I go again :) to that.
> Four and Ar-ken-saw do rhyme if you use a posh RP (Received
> Pronunciation) English accent (fou-ar and saw-ar).
> 
> The girl reading the poem in TC's post did really well IMO.
> 

Indeed she does. But I was not reading it in my 'deer ol Virginya home'
accent, I tend to slip in to that one only on rare occasion. Still, I
guess my RP accent is lacking what finishing touches I should have
received in finishing school, as I have never heard "four" pronounced in
two syllables.

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Doctor John wrote:

> ....and to add a couple of names
> Cholmondely - pron. Chumley
> Featherstonehaugh - pron. Fanshaw
> 
> I'm sure Stephen could add a host of Scottish novelties
> 
> John

No really John, Scots is written the way it sounds.
But it is the sounds…

For those outside the UK

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8308288.stm


-- 

Awrabest,
	Stevie

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Stephen wrote:
> Doctor John wrote:
> 
>> ....and to add a couple of names
>> Cholmondely - pron. Chumley
>> Featherstonehaugh - pron. Fanshaw
>>
>> I'm sure Stephen could add a host of Scottish novelties
>>
>> John
> 
> No really John, Scots is written the way it sounds.
> But it is the sounds…
> 
> For those outside the UK
> 
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8308288.stm
> 
> 

Scone?? Skoon, Skone or Skon??

John
-- 
"Eppur si muove" - Galileo Galilei

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Sabrina Kilian wrote:
> Stephen wrote:

>> The girl reading the poem in TC's post did really well IMO.
>>
> 
> Indeed she does. But I was not reading it in my 'deer ol Virginya home'
> accent, I tend to slip in to that one only on rare occasion. Still, I
> guess my RP accent is lacking what finishing touches I should have
> received in finishing school, 

LOL Get you! :P

 > as I have never heard "four" pronounced in
> two syllables.

Here’s a couple of cartoons from the Guardian’s Steve Bell. IMO he gets 
the upper class posh twits accent spot on. What ho gal!

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=859

-- 

Awrabest,
	Stevie

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Doctor John wrote:
> Stephen wrote:
>> Doctor John wrote:
>>
>>> ....and to add a couple of names
>>> Cholmondely - pron. Chumley
>>> Featherstonehaugh - pron. Fanshaw
>>>
>>> I'm sure Stephen could add a host of Scottish novelties
>>>
>>> John
>> No really John, Scots is written the way it sounds.
>> But it is the sounds…
>>
>> For those outside the UK
>>
>> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8308288.stm
>>
>>
> 
> Scone?? Skoon, Skone or Skon??
> 

OK, Milngavie pronounced Mull-guy. Will that do?
But Auchenshuggle is pronounced Auchenshuggle (Auch-en-shu-gle).


-- 

Awrabest,
	Stevie

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Sabrina Kilian <ski### [at] vtedu> wrote:
> Stephen wrote:
> > "Sabrina Kilian" <ski### [at] vtedu> wrote in message
> > news:4ad934db$1@news.povray.org...
> >
> >> I can not make those rhyme without butchering one or the other. Either
> >> Ar-ken-saw becomes Ar-kens-ur, or Four becomes Fou. Maybe there is a
> >> homograph of 'four' that I am missing? Or maybe I just need a proper
> >> Queen's English accent to get that one.
> >
> > As Bill said it depends on personal accent and I'll add regional and
> > class (there I go again :) to that.
> > Four and Ar-ken-saw do rhyme if you use a posh RP (Received
> > Pronunciation) English accent (fou-ar and saw-ar).
> >
> > The girl reading the poem in TC's post did really well IMO.
>
> Indeed she does. But I was not reading it in my 'deer ol Virginya home'
> accent, I tend to slip in to that one only on rare occasion. Still, I
> guess my RP accent is lacking what finishing touches I should have
> received in finishing school, as I have never heard "four" pronounced in
> two syllables.

A two-syllable 'four' suggests to me some region of northern England, but I
couldn't tell you exactly where. Personally, I would pronounce 'four' as 'for',
and I think I have a fairly middle-of-the-road neutral English accent, maybe a
touch southeast. This makes rhyming 'Arkansas' with 'four' extremely easy for
me, without sounding at all strange (to me!).

Funny how different lines trip up people differently :)

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Stephen wrote:
> 
> OK, Milngavie pronounced Mull-guy. Will that do?

That's a new one on me. You learn something every day :-)

> But Auchenshuggle is pronounced Auchenshuggle (Auch-en-shu-gle).
> 
> 
No, it's pronounced Aw-[clear throat]-en-shu-gle :-D

John
-- 
"Eppur si muove" - Galileo Galilei

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Doctor John wrote:
> Stephen wrote:
>> OK, Milngavie pronounced Mull-guy. Will that do?
> 
> That's a new one on me. You learn something every day :-)

And so you should :D

> 
>> But Auchenshuggle is pronounced Auchenshuggle (Auch-en-shu-gle).
>>
>>
> No, it's pronounced Aw-[clear throat]-en-shu-gle :-D
> 

Whell I never! ;-)

-- 

Best Regards,
	Stephen

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Tim Cook schrieb:

query doesn't rhyme with very? thought it did,

I'd pronouce "query" like "queerie", so that doesn't rhyme.

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Tim Cook wrote:
> query doesn't rhyme with very?

I thought it did too, but I've also heard it pronounced "queery", with what 
an american would call a "long e", and which Warp would hit me about the 
head for calling it that. ;-)

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> http://phd.pp.ru/Texts/fun/english-poem.txt
>

Eh, I got halfway through before my brain grew tired.

What gets me is trying to differentiate in speech or hearing the two names,
"Don" and "Dawn". Perhaps especially if you've spent time both around suthunuhs
and New Yorkers.

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Darren New wrote:
> http://phd.pp.ru/Texts/fun/english-poem.txt
> 
This is just what I needed, thanks, I'm taking English classes, 
Cambridge's, I just made it to CELFIC "A", well only with 76.5 but I 
have improved a lot, understanding better grammar and the use tenses, 
still I have a long way to go, DELFIC looks pretty difficult and there I 
need to do really good since is the preparation for Cambridge FCE.

Thanks again.

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Saul Luizaga wrote:
> This is just what I needed, thanks, I'm taking English classes, 

Congrats. I have a terrible time with foreign languages. I had to cheat to 
even pass French class in high school. (altho I was surprised how much came 
back to me 30 years later when I visited France.)

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

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Darren New wrote:
> http://phd.pp.ru/Texts/fun/english-poem.txt
> 

Most excellent!

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Darren New wrote:
> Saul Luizaga wrote:
>> This is just what I needed, thanks, I'm taking English classes, 
> 
> Congrats. I have a terrible time with foreign languages. I had to cheat 
> to even pass French class in high school. (altho I was surprised how 
> much came back to me 30 years later when I visited France.)
> 

Then you are not far from understanding Spanish, French is a brother of 
Spanish and AFAIK also English, having relatively common origin.

You have a good memory then.

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TC wrote:
> After trying to get my tongue untangled,
> 
> (which out of my mouth now dangled),
> 
> On to YouTube did I hie,
> 
> And behold, there did espy:
> 
> A young maiden, bright and fair,
> 
> With golden shimmer in her hair,
> 
> Undauntedly she offered battle,
> 
> Against the poem she'd test her mettle,
> 
> And victorious she has been,
> 
> A true pronunciation queen.
> 
> 
> 
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1spqX4sIDo
> 
> 
> 

In deed very good, and is more help to me, thanks.

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Saul Luizaga schrieb:

> Then you are not far from understanding Spanish, French is a brother of 
> Spanish and AFAIK also English, having relatively common origin.

Well, /part/ of English is a brother to French; some other part is 
brother to German, and yet some other is brother to Danish, Irish or Welsh.

The British Isles, despite their geographic isolation, have had their 
share of (successful) invasions and occupations, making English a 
hodgepodge of languages: To the originally Celtic-speaking population 
(being the root of Welsh and Breton), the Romans brought Latin, the 
Angles, Saxons and Jutes contributed Germanic languages, the Scots 
(which were originally of Irish origin) added Gaelic, the Danes brought 
another Germanic language, and the Normans introduced French. It appears 
that it was not until medieval times that English became anything close 
to a stable language.

Western (left of the Rhine) and mediterranean continental Europe, on the 
other hand, saw a long Roman occupation, leaving a strong Latin 
footprint in all the languages, that dominates over all the other 
influences these languages have assimilated over time (be it Germanic 
languages in France and Spain during the Migration Period, or Arabic in 
Spain during Moorish occupation, or the original native languages spoken 
before the Roman occupation).

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Interesting, I knew little about it but this clarifies things, thanks.

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> http://phd.pp.ru/Texts/fun/english-poem.txt

  Sedulously eschew obfuscatory and tautologous hyperverbosity, prolixity
and sesquipedalian loquaciousness, espouse elucidation.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> http://phd.pp.ru/Texts/fun/english-poem.txt
> 
>   Sedulously eschew obfuscatory and tautologous hyperverbosity, prolixity
> and sesquipedalian loquaciousness, espouse elucidation.
> 

I actually know what most of those words mean. Other than prolixity and 
sedulously.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> > Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> >> http://phd.pp.ru/Texts/fun/english-poem.txt
> > 
> >   Sedulously eschew obfuscatory and tautologous hyperverbosity, prolixity
> > and sesquipedalian loquaciousness, espouse elucidation.
> > 

> I actually know what most of those words mean. Other than prolixity and 
> sedulously.

  I also assume that, unlike me, you know how to pronounce all those words?-)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> Warp wrote:
>>> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>>>> http://phd.pp.ru/Texts/fun/english-poem.txt
>>>   Sedulously eschew obfuscatory and tautologous hyperverbosity, prolixity
>>> and sesquipedalian loquaciousness, espouse elucidation.
>>>
> 
>> I actually know what most of those words mean. Other than prolixity and 
>> sedulously.
> 
>   I also assume that, unlike me, you know how to pronounce all those words?-)
> 

Indubitably ;)

-- 

Best Regards,
	Stephen

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Warp wrote:
>   I also assume that, unlike me, you know how to pronounce all those words?-)

I think so. Oddly enough, the really long words are the ones with obvious 
pronunciation. Probably because nobody pronounces them without having 
consciously learned how to pronounce them. (Modulo spelling quirks like 
"psychology" coming from greek letters and such.) While they're not easy to 
pronounce, they are pronounced how a native speaker would expect from the 
spelling.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

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Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> http://phd.pp.ru/Texts/fun/english-poem.txt
> 
>   Sedulously eschew obfuscatory and tautologous hyperverbosity, prolixity
> and sesquipedalian loquaciousness, espouse elucidation.
> 
damn...

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