Speaking English Any Way They Like!

. 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!!! Adapted from: Gerald Nolst Trenite (1870-1946)

[Note: evidently the above was subsequently expanded considerably by the author, or the version given here is a simplification of the original.  At any rate, a longer version of this poem is provided by The Simplified Spelling Society at site linked from the title of this post.]

Speaking of which, the title of this post is, of course, taken from Lerner and Loewe's "My Fair Lady," adapted from Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, which in turn was based on a Greek legend. In the legend, sculptor Pygmalion creates a beautiful statue of an ideal woman, who is brought to life, as Galatea. The rest of the story is an account of their rocky relationship. Here is Henry Higgin's description of the vagaries of British pronunciation, based more on the wealth of British dialects than on the eccentricities of English spelling (Alan Jay Lerner, adapted from G. Bernard Shaw): [HIGGINS] Look at her: a prisoner of the gutter, Condemned by every syllable she utters, By right she should be taken out and hung, For the cold-blooded murder of the English tongue. [ELIZA very indignant] Ah-ah-aw-aw-oo-oo! [HIGGINS whipping out his book] "Ah-ah-aw-aw-oo-oo" ... Heavens! what a sound! This is what the British population, Calls an elementary education. [PICKERING] Come, sir; I think you picked a poor example. [HIGGINS] Did I...? Hear them down in Soho Square, Dropping "h"s everywhere, Speaking English anyway they like. You sir: did you go to school? [sitting down beside a bystander] [A BYSTANDER] What d'you tike me for, a fool? [HIGGINS] No one taught him "take" instead of "tike". Hear a Yorkshireman, or worse, Hear a Cornishman converse; I'd rather hear a choir singing flat. Chickens, cackling in a barn; Just like this one [He points to Eliza]. [ELIZA laughingly] Garn! [HIGGINS noting in his book] "Garn"— I ask you, sir: what sort of word is that? It's "ow" and "garn" that keep her in her place, Not her wretched clothes and dirty face. Why can't the English teach their children how to speak? This verbal class distinction, by now, should be antique. If you spoke as she does, sir, instead of the way you do, Why you might be selling flowers too. [PICKERING not sure what to make of this] I beg your pardon! [HIGGINS] An Englishman's way of speaking absolutely classifies him. The moment he talks he makes some other Englishman despise him. One common language I'm afraid we'll never get. Oh why can't the English learn to— Set a good example to people, who's English, is painful to your ears? The Scotch and the Irish leave you close to tears! There even are places where English completely disappears, Well America they haven't used it for years. Why can't the English teach their children how to speak? Norwegians learn Norwegian; the Greeks are taught their Greek; In France every Frenchman knows his language from "A" to "Zed." The French don't care what they do, actually, as long as they pronounce it properly. Arabians learn Arabian with the speed of summer lightning. The Hebrews learn it backwards which is absolutely frightening. Use proper English, you're regarded as a freak. Oh why can't the English— Why can't the English learn to speak? Shaw/Lerner/Loewe