First post

You might be familiar with the poem written, I believe, in the 1920’s by a gentleman called Gerard Nolst Trenité and entitled “The Chaos”, ostensibly an aid to speakers of other languages attempting to get a grip on the intricacies of English sound-spelling relations, aka phonographemics in the business (blimey!), but in fact, a brilliantly bewildering display of apparent irregularities, exceptions, pitfalls and other monsters, guaranteed to keep you awake at night. Yes, for all its underlying regularity (believe it or not!), English pronunciation is almost as daunting as the rules of cricket (well, not quite that bad!).

Mr Nolst Trenité’s magnificent monument to linguistic despair prompted me to try my hand at putting people off English for good, by writing a ditty along similar lines. Here, for the innocent, the curious, the dogged and the downright masochistic, it is.

Sorry to Worry you

It might seem strange that flaw and anger
Choose to rhyme with door and Bangor,
Lose with blues, yet dour and manger.
(Pose and grows seem even stranger).

Tomb’s not comb, though spelt the same,
Still, roam and Rome both play the game
With heaume and gnome, pray keep ye calm,
Who come as no surprise, like Notre Dame.

For why should hive not sound like live
And tone not none and five not give?
For sure they shed no light on how they’re read
It is not right, when all is done and said.

Take brooch and mooch and book and blood:
Can e’er their vowels be understood?
And what of farce and scarce and force and worse
And work and cork and shirk and terse?

I’ faith the game’s not straight I’ll swear,
Ill-matched are watch and catch, while fair
Will fain be put with ere, yet here and ear
Resemble closest tear and weir.

Just what would make the venerable Bede
Of words like wort and hurt and Bert to read?
And how did Read and Owen know to sort
Out font and fraught from front and fought?

This thing you find in path and paths
Is just not there in lath and maths.
Now, some say bath and laugh and Aunt,
And Kant but can’t, and rant but shan’t.

Anthem sounds like Grantham, brother dear,
Though broth and both, like Keith and breathe, I fear.
Will make the going tougher, just like leaves
And leaf and loaves and loaf or thief and thieves.

Take heart, despite the wear and tear or drear,
As words like arch impinge upon your ear,
Moustache and architect and ache
Ne’er will harm you more than weight or height or sheik.

If in vain to grasp the sense you try
Of these poor lines, as tears go by,
Then let the rhythm be your guide
And rhyme and spelling sounds decide.

Unless, perchance, the poet’s vision blurred
And word were made to rhyme with sword
Till order fly away from what you read
And bleak disorder rear its ugly head,

And, like a heavy, heaving bull,
The poet try to rhyme with gull
Such specimens as Gaul and pull or ghoul and shall,
Till you, poor reader, pall and swoon and fall.

T’were surely surly spite, upon my soul,
To take the unsuspecting reader for a fool,
And down the winding garden path to lead,
Until he, crying in the wind, wishes he were dead!

So let’s be kind in thought and deed
By pointing out that lead and lead,
Though spelt alike, diverge in sense,
As do read and read in tense.

And let’s explain how creak and steak
And yea and meat and beak and break
Or pairs like beer and bear and pear and peer
Are there to ease the eye and please the ear.

Take Urquhart, Liam, Slough and Clough and Dirk
Or Stephan, Stephen, Rolf and Woolf, where rhymes don’t work
Or Anne and Dan and Cannes, where ’deed they do
Like Helen, Ellen, Pru and Lou and Kew and Crewe‒and Sue.

Byrne’s like Burns but Byron, Bourke and Bourne
Will mystify and leave forlorn
Whoever sighing tries to say them,
Like McLaughlan, Leigh and Latham.

Harwich, Wycombe, Beaulieu, Alnwick,
Norwich, Beauchamp: truly panic!
Try instead Carlisle and Brough,
Then Wraxall, Cholmondeley, had enough?

And still you cry for more? I’truth,
You might know Crich or e’en Redruth
And Leicester, Gloucester, Brougham and Slyne
Or Lynn or Ashton-under-Lyne.

And now you’ve reached the end, you’re none the worse,
And we’re still friends, despite this Calvary in verse.
I hope you’ll come to love these gems,
Which never rhyme with James, but Thames.

Henry Daniels
October 2010