ENGLISH IS TOUGH ENOUGH

ENGLISH IS TOUGH ENOUGH

"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!

Punsters deserve to be drawn and quoted

There was a man who entered a local paper's pun contest. He sent in ten different puns, in the hope that at least one of the puns would win. Unfortunately, no pun in ten did.

Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, but when they lit a fire in the craft it sank -- proving once and for all that you can't have your kayak and heat it, too.

There was once a wise man who loved a beautiful maiden, but she lived in a marsh where his car always got stuck and, besides, her father had a gun, so he never did get close enough to tell her of his passion. However, she had a more energetic suitor who purchased amphibious tires for his car and, when her father was asleep, speedily carried her off.

Moral: Treads rush in where wise men fear to fool.

A lion was prancing through the jungle one day, roaring at the top of his voice for all to hear: "I am king of the jungle, for my mighty strength and lion-like prowess strikes fear into all other creatures!"

An eagle lands on a nearby tree branch and says, "Not so fast, Leo buddy!" the eagle calls. "For it is *I* who is the rightful king of the jungle, as my wings enable me to attack from above, and my beak and talons rip my victims to shreds!"

Whereupon a skunk walks calmly out of the trees. Approaching the ferocious feline and fearful flighted one, he meekly says, "You're BOTH wrong! Needing neither fight nor flight, I disable my would-be opponents most skillfully! Wanna sniff?"

And the three animals engage in a heated argument over who is the rightful king of the jungle. While they argue, oblivious to their surroundings, a huge grizzly bear walks up and eats them all - hawk, lion, and stinker.

One day, an elderly woman was walking along the street, coming home from the supermarket. Her bag of groceries was especially heavy that day, and as she passed Nathan Hale's Used Cars, she got an idea that she could drive herself to the store and save a lot of shoe leather, time and aching muscles. She walks into the car dealership and, as it just so happens, gets the owner himself. He asks her what kind of car she wants and she replies,

"Well, sonny, I can't remember the name exactly, but it has something to do with hate or anger."

The owner replies, "Well, let's see... Oh yes, you want a Plymouth Fury! We have a couple on the lot. What color do you prefer?"

The lady has some trouble explaining the exact color to him, so she reaches into her shopping bag, takes out an ear of corn, strips down the shucks and says, "I want this color sonny."

To which Nathan replies, "Ma'am I'm sorry, but we don't have any in this color. Could I show you a nice blue one?"

"No son, I want this color."

"But ma'am, they didn't make that color! Maybe a cherry red one would suit you?" says the owner, obviously worried about losing a sale.

By this time, the old lady gets mad, and starts throwing things at the owner, thereby chasing him out of the office and into the lot. One of the salesmen, coming into the office from the back door, notices the disruption and asks the secretary what the old woman was so upset about.

The secretary replies, "Apparently, Hale hath no Fury like the woman's corn!"


What do you call three rabbits in a row, hopping backwards simultaneously?

A receding hareline.

Show me where Stalin's buried and I'll show you a communist plot.

Show me a famous composer's liquor cabinet and I'll show you Beethoven's Fifth.

Tibetian housewife upon entering her smoke-filled kitchen: "Oh, my baking yak!"

Show me the first president's dentures, and I'll show you the George Washington Bridge.

A man recently invented a knife that cuts four loaves of bread simultaneously. He calls his invention a four-loaf cleaver.

Santa's helpers are subordinate clauses.

Modern philsophy: I'm pink; therefore, I'm Spam.

Two peanuts were walking in Central Park, one was assaulted.

As the great Jedi English teacher was quoted in saying, "metaphors be with you."

If I hated my house and fell in love with my office building, would that be an edifice complex?

Two molecules are walking down the street and they run in to each other. One says to the other, "Are you alright?"

"No I lost an electron!"

"Are you sure"

"I'm positive !"

A group of chess enthusiasts had checked into a hotel, and were standing in the lobby discussing their recent tournament victories. After about an hour, the manager came out of the office and asked them to disperse. "But why?", they asked, as they moved off. "Because," he said, "I can't stand chess nuts boasting in an open foyer."

A doctor made it his regular habit to stop off at a bar for a hazelnut daiquiri on his way home. The bartender knew of his habit, and would always have the drink waiting at precisely 5:03 p.m. One afternoon, as the end of the work day approached, the bartender was dismayed to find that he was out of hazelnut extract. Thinking quickly, he threw together a daiquiri made with hickory nuts and set it on the bar.

The doctor came in at his regular time, took one sip of the drink and exclaimed, "This isn't a hazelnut daiquiri!" "No, I'm sorry", replied the bartender, "it's a hickory daiquiri, doc."

A hungry African lion was roaming through the jungle looking for something to eat. He came across two men. One was sitting under a tree and reading a book; the other was typing away on his typewriter. The lion quickly pounced on the man reading the book and devoured him.

Even the king of the jungle knows that readers digest and writers cramp.

A guy goes to a psychiatrist. "Doc, I keep having these alternating recurring dreams. First I'm a teepee; then I'm a wigwam; then I'm a teepee; then I'm a wigwam. It's driving me crazy. What's wrong with me?" The doctor replies: "It's very simple. You're two tents."

A man went to his dentist because he feels something wrong in his mouth. The dentist examines him and says, "that new upper plate I put in for you six months ago is eroding. What have you been eating?" The man replies, "all I can think of is that about four months ago my wife made some asparagus and put some stuff on it that was delicious...Hollandaise sauce. I loved it so much I now put it on everything --- meat, toast, fish, vegetables, everything."

"Well," says the dentist, "that's probably the problem. Hollandaise sauce is made with lots of lemon juice, which is highly corrosive. It's eaten away your upper plate. I'll make you a new plate, and this time use chrome." "Why chrome?" asks the patient. To which the dentist replies, "It's simple. Everyone knows that there's no plate like chrome for the Hollandaise!"

An Indian chief had three wives, each of whom was pregnant. The first gave birth to a boy. The chief was so elated he built her a teepee made of deer hide. A few days later, the second gave birth, also to a boy. The chief was very happy. He built her a teepee made of antelope hide. The third wife gave birth a few days later, but the chief kept the details a secret. He built this one a two story teepee, made out of a hippopotamus hide. He challenged the tribe to guess what had occurred. Many tried, unsuccessfully.

Finally, one young brave declared that the third wife had given birth to twin boys.

"Correct," said the chief. "How did you figure it out?" The warrior answered, "It's elementary. The value of the squaw of the hippopotamus is equal to the sons of the squaws of the other two hides."

Very early one morning two birds are sitting at the side of a large puddle of oil. They see a worm on the other side. So... the one flies over and the other one swims through - which one gets to the worm first?

The one who swam, of course, because "da oily boid gets da woim"

Thousands of hyphens perish as English marches on

About 16,000 words have succumbed to pressures of the Internet age and lost their hyphens in a new edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary.

Bumble-bee is now bumblebee, ice-cream is ice cream and pot-belly is pot belly.

And if you've got a problem, don't be such a crybaby (formerly cry-baby).

The hyphen has been squeezed as informal ways of communicating, honed in text messages and emails, spread on Web sites and seep into newspapers and books.

"People are not confident about using hyphens anymore, they're not really sure what they are for," said Angus Stevenson, editor of the Shorter OED, the sixth edition of which was published this week.

Another factor in the hyphen's demise is designers' distaste for its ungainly horizontal bulk between words.

"Printed writing is very much design-led these days in adverts and Web sites, and people feel that hyphens mess up the look of a nice bit of typography," he said. "The hyphen is seen as messy looking and old-fashioned."

The team that compiled the Shorter OED, a two-volume tome despite its name, only committed the grammatical amputations after exhaustive research.

"The whole process of changing the spelling of words in the dictionary is all based on our analysis of evidence of language, it's not just what we think looks better," Stevenson said.

Researchers examined a corpus of more than 2 billion words, consisting of full sentences that appeared in newspapers, books, Web sites and blogs from 2000 onwards.

For the most part, the dictionary dropped hyphens from compound nouns, which were unified in a single word (e.g. pigeonhole) or split into two (e.g. test tube).

But hyphens have not lost their place altogether. The Shorter OED editor commended their first-rate service rendered to English in the form of compound adjectives, much like the one in the middle of this sentence.

"There are places where a hyphen is necessary," Stevenson said. "Because you can certainly start to get real ambiguity."

Twenty-odd people came to the party, he said. Or was it twenty odd people?

Some of the 16,000 hyphenation changes in the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, sixth edition:

Formerly hyphenated words split in two:

fig leaf

hobby horse

ice cream

pin money

pot belly

test tube

water bed

Formerly hyphenated words unified in one:

bumblebee

chickpea

crybaby

leapfrog

logjam

lowlife

pigeonhole

touchline

waterborne

-By Simon Rabinovitch

More night jobs would keep youths off the streets?

Nine Easy Steps to Longer Sentences

by Kathy McGinty

Are you tired of short, direct, and simple sentences that seem to take forever to fill up a page? Are you paid by the word? In either case you can benefit by increasing the number of words in your sentences and the bulk of your writing. And it's easy if you just follow nine simple steps, many of which you may already know and practice.


Step 1: Begin to lengthen your statement by referring to studies, even if you're not aware of any studies. After all, who really cares? And if anyone challenges you, you can protect yourself by weaseling (see Step 5).

Studies have found that more night jobs would keep youths off the streets.

Step 2: Replace simple words like more, jobs, night, youths, and streets with multiple syllable words of
Latin or Greek origin.

Studies have found that additional nocturnal employment would keep adolescents off thoroughfares.

Step 3: Use sophisticated verbs, the vaguer the better. The verb found is much too clear and simple, whereas indicate, develop, and identify are excellent multi-purpose verbs with so many meanings that you can use them in almost any context to mean almost anything. What precisely does indicate mean, anyway? If you use identify or indicate, you can further lengthen your sentence by attaching the fact that to it.

Studies have identified the fact that additional nocturnal employment would keep adolescents off thoroughfares.

Step 4: Rely on such adjectives as available, applicable, and appropriate to lengthen sentences without changing or adding any meaning. If possible, use various, one of the most meaningless of all the meaningless modifiers.

Various available applicable studies have identified the fact that additional appropriate nocturnal employment would keep adolescents off thoroughfares.

Step 5: Use weasel words as often as possible. A number of is particularly useful because it can refer to any number at all: -9, 4.78, 0, 5 billion, you name it. (For more effective weaseling, replace wills and woulds with cans and coulds.)

A number of various available applicable studies have generally identified the fact that additional appropriate nocturnal employment could usually keep adolescents off thoroughfares

Step 6: Sprinkle your sentences with classic redundancies.

A number of various available applicable studies have generally identified the fact that additional appropriate nocturnal employment could usually keep juvenile adolescents off thoroughfares.

Step 7: Add meaningless "it is" and "there is/are" expressions, not only to lengthen your sentences but also to give them a scholarly ring.

There is no escaping the fact that it is considered very important to note that a number of various available applicable studies have generally identified the fact that additional appropriate nocturnal employment could usually keep juvenile adolescents off thoroughfares.

Step 8: For the precision that all good writing deserves, use legalisms, the more redundant the better.

There is no escaping the fact that it is considered very important to note that a number of various available applicable studies have generally identified the fact that additional appropriate nocturnal employment could usually keep juvenile adolescents off thoroughfares, including but not limited to the time prior to midnight on weeknights and/or 2 a.m. on weekends.

Step 9: Use foreign words and phrases to lengthen and enliven your sentences. Especially apt are Latinisms and other obscurities whose meanings have long been forgotten if they were ever known.

There is no escaping the fact that it is considered very important to note that a number of various available applicable studies studies ipso facto have generally identified the fact that additional appropriate nocturnal employment could usually keep juvenile adolescents off thoroughfares during the night hours, including but not limited to the time prior to midnight on weeknights and/or 2 a.m. on weekends.

So there you have it. Following these nine steps, I've managed in no time to increase the number of words in my sentence nearly seven fold, well above the level of incomprehensibility. And best of all, I've accomplished this feat with little or no change in meaning.

(Source)

Why The English Language Is Hard to learn - 2

Look before you leap, but
He who hesitates is lost

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again
Don't beat your head against a brick wall

Absence makes the heart grow fonder
Why then Out of sight, out of mind

Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today
Don't cross the bridge until you come to it

Two heads are better than one
Paddle your own canoe

More haste less speed
Time waits for no man

You're never too old to learn
yet You can't teach an old dog new tricks

A word to the wise is sufficient
Talk is cheap

It's better to be safe than sorry
Nothing ventured, nothing gained

Don't look a gift horse in the mouth
Beware of Greeks bearing gifts

Do unto others as you would have others do unto you
Nice guys finish last

12. Hitch your wagon to a star
Don't bite off more than you can chew

Many hands make light work
Too many cooks spoil the broth

Don't judge a book by its cover
Clothes make the man

The squeaking wheel gets the grease
Silence is golden

Birds of a feather flock together
Opposites attract

The pen is mightier than the sword
Actions speak louder than words

Why The English Language Is Hard to learn

There is no egg in eggplant or ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple...
Is cheese the plural of choose?
If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught?
If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?
In what language do people recite at a play, and play at a recital?
Ship by truck, and send cargo by ship?
Have noses that run and feet that smell?
Park on driveways and drive on parkways?
Sweetmeats are candies, while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat.
We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square, and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.
And why is it that writers write, but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce, and hammers don't ham?
If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth beeth?
One goose, 2 geese. So, one moose, 2 meese?
One index, two indices?
How can the weather be hot as hell one day and cold as hell another?
When a house burns up, it burns down.
You fill in a form by filling it out, and an alarm clock goes off by going on.
When the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.
And why, when I wind up my watch, I start it, but when I wind up this essay, I end it?
.English muffins were not invented in England or French fries in France.
How can 'slim chance and a fat chance' be the same, while ' wise man and a wise guy' are opposites?


We must polish the Polish furniture.

He could lead if he would get the lead out.

The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.

Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.

A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.

When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.

I did not object to the object.

The bandage was wound around the wound.

The farm was used to produce produce.
The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.

The insurance was invalid for the invalid.

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.

A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a 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 injections my jaw got number.

Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.

I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.

How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?


The more I learn, the less I know.

Now i know why i failed in English.

It's not my fault but the silly language doesn't quite know whether it's coming or going


(Source)

Chinglish on Beijing's signs shocks foreigners

What strikes foreign visitors the most in Beijing may not be the interesting customs, unique architecture and enticing dishes, but the Chinglish on signs.

China Centennial Altar is a landmark building completed in 1999 to greet the new millennium. However, a name plate near the front door reads "China Centennial Temple" and another sign about 50 meters away confidently offers "China Centennial Monument."

Some menus of Chinese dishes are also confusing. The "Italian spaghetti" is translated into "ideas' powder," which derives from the literal translation of the Chinese name.

A thick wheat-based noodle in Japanese cuisine is literally translated according to the Chinese name into "fry the dark winter in the sun's way," which makes no sense at all.

To Jill, an Australian student in Beijing, the Chinglish translations she has collected serve as a chronic laughing stock.

"It is not too difficult for the foreigners who know some Chinese to understand the Chinglish although the translations are very funny," said Jill, who has taken almost 100 pictures of the ridiculous translations.

In addition, some English translations seem horrible. In a restaurant menu, the name of a dish made of young chicken is translated into "young chicken without sex," which makes foreign customers flinch.

The signboard of a small noodle restaurant near the Beijing West Railway Station reads "face powder restaurant," because the two Chinese characters of "noodle" in a whole can be separately translated to "face" and "powder."

Seeing the translation on the sign, a foreigner named David said he would not eat there. He said, "I feel horrible!"

English language is catching on in China. About 250 million Chinese people are learning English as a second language, according to an estimation of the organizers of the Beijing Speaks Foreign Languages Program, which is working hard to ensure all of Beijing's English signs are grammatically correct and free of "Chinglish" by the end of 2007.
(China Daily)



'No Noising' and 'Airline Pulp' named Top Chinglish Words of 2006

The Top Chinglish Words and Phrases of 2006 :

1. "No Noising". Translated as "quiet please!"

2. "Airline pulp." Food served aboard an airliner.

3. "Jumping umbrella". A hang-glider.

4. "Question Authority". Information Booth.

5. "Burnt meat biscuit." No it's not something to enjoy from the North of England but what is claimed to be bread dipped in a savory meat sauce.

Bonus: GLM's all-time favorite from previous surveys: "The Slippery are very crafty". Translation: Slippery when wet!


Visitors to the Beijing Olympics may need to pack a dictionary if they are not to be bamboozled by phrases such "no noising", "airline pulp" and "jumping umbrella".

The terms, meaning quiet please, airplane meals and a hang glider, are all examples of 'Chinglish' - Chinese attempts to translate phrases into English, not always successfully.

Some of the phrase have become so common that they actually entered the English language, according to the Global Language Monitor (GLM), a San Diego-based group.



More Chinglish

1. In a Beijing hotel lobby:
The lift is being fixed for next day. During that time we regret that you will be unbearable.”

2. In a Shanghai hotel elevator:
“Please leave your values at the front desk.”

3. In a Hangzhou hotel:
The flattening of underwear with pleasure is the job of the chambermaid;

4. In a Jilin hotel:
“You are very invited to take advantage of the chambermaid.

5. In a Wuxi dry cleaner:
Please drop your trousers here for best results.”

6. Outside a Tianjin clothing shop:
Order your summer suits quick. Because of big rush we will execute customers in strict rotation.”

7. In a Xian tailor shop:
“Ladies may have a fit upstairs.”

8. In a Guilin hotel:
“Because of impropriety of entertaining guests of the opposite sex in the bedroom, it is suggested that the lobby be used for this purpose.”

9. An ad by Kunming dentist:
“Teeth extracted by the latest methodists.”

10. In a Hangzhou zoo:
“Please do not feed animals. If you have suitable food give it to the guard on duty.”

11. In a Taiyuan bar:
“Special cocktails for the ladies with nuts.”

12. In a Huashan temple:
“It is forbidden to enter a woman. Even a foreigner if dressed as a man.”

---

If you’ve learned to speak fluent English, you must be a genius!
Pursue at your leisure, English lovers. Reasons why the English language is so hard to learn