自1920年發表后，這首“詩”早已成為美國ESL(非母語英語）課堂普遍練習發音的課文。

The Chaos

(摘自1920 教科書 Drop Your Foreign Accent: engelsche uitspraakoefeningen by Dr. Gerard Nolst Trenité)

Dearest creature in creation,

Study English pronunciation.

I will teach you in my verse

Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.

It will keep you, Suzy, busy,

Make your head with heat grow dizzy.

Tear in eye, your dress you’ll tear.

Queer, fair seer, hear my prayer.

Pray, console your loving poet,

Make my coat look new, dear, sew it!

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.)

Made has not the sound of bade;

Say, said, pay, paid, laid but plaid.

Now I surely will not plague you

With such words as vague and ague.

But be careful how you speak:

Say gush, bush, steak, streak, break, bleak,

Previous, precious, fuschia, via,

Recipe, pipe, studding-sail, choir;

Woven, oven how and low,

Script, receipt, shoe, poem, and toe.

Hear me say, devoid of trickery,

Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,

Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,

Exiles, similes, reviles;

Wholly, holly, signal, signing

Same, examining, but mining,

Scholar, vicar, and cigar,

Solar, mica, war and far;

From “desire”: desirable

-admirable from “admire”;

Lumber, plumber, bier but brier,

Topsham, brougham, renown but known,

Knowledge, done, lone, gone, none, tone,

One, anemone, Balmoral,

Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;

Gertrude, German, wind and mind,

Scene, Melpomene, mankind.

Tortoise, turquoise, chamois-leather,

Reading, Reading, heathen, heather.

This phonetic labyrinth

Gives moss, gross, brook, brooch, ninth, plinth.

Billet does not end like ballet,

Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.

Blood and flood are not like food,

Nor is mould like should and would.

Discount, viscount, load and broad,

Toward, to forward, to reward.

Ricocheted and croqueting, croquet?

Right! Your pronunciation’s O.K.;

Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,

Friend and fiend, alive and live.

Hugh but hug and hood but hoot,

Buoyant, minute but “minute”.

Would it tally with my rhyme

If I mentioned paradigm?

Liberty, library, heave and heaven,

Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.

We say hallowed, but allowed,

People, leopard, towed, but vowed.

Mark the difference, moreover,

Between mover, plover, Dover,

Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,

Chalice, but police and lice;

Camel, constable, unstable,

Principle, disciple, label.

Petal, penal, and canal,

Wait, surmise, plait, promise, pal.

Suit, suite, ruin. Circuit, conduit

Rhyme with “shirk it” and “beyond it,”

Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,

Senator, spectator, mayor.

Ivy, privy, famous; clamour

Has the a of drachm and “hammer,”

Stranger does not rhyme with anger,

Neither does devour with clangour.

Soul but foul and gaunt but aunt;

Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant.

Arsenic, specific, scenic,

Relic, rhetoric, hygienic,

Prison, bison, treasure-trove

Treason, hover, cover, cove.

Don’t be down, my own, but rough it,

And distinguish buffet – buffet;

Brood, stood, roof, rook, school, wool, stool,

Worcester, Boleyn, foul and ghoul.

But mind trivial and vial,

Tripod, menial, denial,

Troll and trolley, realm and ream.

Schedule, mischief, schism and scheme.

Shoes, goes, does. Now first say: finger;

Then say: singer, ginger, linger.

Real, zeal, mauve, gauze and gauge,

Marriage, foliage, mirage, age.

Hero, heron, query, very,

Parry, tarry, fury, bury,

Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth,

Job, Job, blossom, bosom, oath.

Though the difference seems little,

We say actual but victual

Seat, sweat, chaste, caste, Leigh, eight, height,

Put, nut, granite and unite.

Reefer does not rhyme with deafer,

Feoffer does, and zephyr, heifer.

Dull, bull, Geoffrey, George, ate, late,

Hint, pint, senate but sedate,

Gaelic, Arabic, pacific,

Science, conscience, scientific,

Tour but our and succor, four,

Gas, alas and Arkansas.

Sea, idea, guinea, area,

Psalm, Maria, but malaria.

Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.

Doctrine, turpentine, marine.

Compare alien with Italian,

Dandelion and battalion.

Rally with ally; yea, ye,

Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, key, quay.

Say aver, but ever, fever,

Neither, leisure, skein, receiver.

Starry, granary, canary.

Crevice but device and eyrie.

Face, but preface, but grimace.

Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.

Bass, large, target, gin, give, verging,

Ought, oust, 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, clerk and jerk,

Ask, grasp, wasp, demesne, cork 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, like rowlock, gunwale,

Islington and Isle of Wight,

Housewife, verdict and indict.

Don’t you think so, reader, rather,

Saying lather, bather, father?

Finally: which rhymes with enough,

Though, through, plough, cough, hough

Or tough?

Hiccough has the sound of “sup”.

My advice is give it up!!!

練習建議：在每個發音相似的詞上注上音標，然后自己沒事兒多練練。再跟音頻上的發音做對比

PS：看不懂不必著急，因為這首詩只是集合了常見的容易讀錯發音的詞匯，而詩文本身并沒有深層意思。

（來源：愛思英語，編輯 Helen）