I saw this poem appear on the Linguist List about 10 years ago.  I dug it up again today because of something that reminded me of it.  I couldn't find it listed in the LinguistList archives, but found it elsewhere.

In poetry form, it is an invaluable resource on English pronounciation for non-native English speakers. And native English speakers get a lot of fun reading it too.

Enjoy ......

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English is Tough Stuff
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   This poem is properly titled "The Chaos", and appeared in Drop Your Foreign Accent - Engelse Uitspraakoefeningen, by G. Nolst Trenite (5th rev. ed., H. D. Tjeenk Willink & Zoon, 1929).  It can be found at:
    [...]

     [The poem "The Chaos" is an accumulation of lots of things
     that are strange about the way words are pronounced in English. Available at several web locations:

http://www.frivolity.com/teatime/Songs_and_Poems/english_is_tough_stuff.html

http://4umi.com/charivarius/chaos/
http://www.jokes2go.com/poems/7237.html?21
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Jeff

Laurent

Well, Jeff, that was fun except for showing the painful inadequacy of my education when it comes to mythology. I guess I better get my Homer out...

/G

Thanks Jeff, that was a roar...I really enjoyed reading that, its a real feast!

It really bring out the difficulties doesn't it? Laurent, so would I like to see one about French

That was both extremely fun and quite depressing. I was rather concerned that I had to look so many words up in a dictionary, and not just the mythological ones!

I have one little question, though. How would you native speakers pronounce the following sentence:

"Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key"

Or rather, how would you pronounce 'ay' and 'aye' respectively? Since either can be a variant spelling of the other, both can be pronounced either as 'eye' or as '[h]ey', which is of course also the point of this line. Would you pronounce it as 'eye, eye, eye, ey, ey, ee'?

Beware of heard, a dreadful word,

That looks like beard and sounds like bird.

And dead--it's said like bed, not bead;

For goodness sake, don't call it deed!

Watch out for meat and great and threat.

(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt.)

A moth is not a moth in mother;

The English Lesson

We'll begin with box, and the plural is boxes,
But the plural of ox should be oxen, not oxes.
Then one fowl is goose, but two are called geese,
Yet the plural of moose should never be meese.
You may find a lone mouse or a whole lot of mice,
But the plural of house is houses, not hice.

[...]

http://www.humbleapostrophe.com/english.html

Really funny! And it's interesting material to be used with students. Thanks!

Marisa

Well, the plural form of mouse depends on context.  I naturally say mice. When I was a trainer at Caterpillar, I chose to follow the usage of "mouses" of the key person I was training in the pilot phase for the regular cited (and expensive, and risky) project on controlled language writing and machine translation.  I did check all kinds of user manuals and online (mid 90s), yet the plural form was nowhere to be found since the computer accessory was always cited in the singular form.  I didn't feel that it was worth risking the acceptance of such an important project on a small issue of how to pronounce the plural form of the computer accessory, so I regularly said "mouses" in that environment.  And I say "mice" to my kids today.

The word "fish" is a bit more ambiguous.  There is a sign in the aquarium/museum in Chicago that refers to "fishes".  I seem to use both "fish" and "fishes" interchangeably for the plural.

Jeff

Originally written by Jeff Allen There is a sign in the aquarium/museum in Chicago that refers to "fishes".  I seem to use both "fish" and "fishes" interchangeably for the plural.

There is a distinction between the plural forms of "fish" and "fishes."  The two sentences below have different meanings:

1.  There are three fish in this tank.
2.  There are three fishes in this tank.

Sentence No. 1 means that the number of swimming-things in the tank is three, and they may or may not be of the same species.  Sentence No. 2 means that there are three separate species of fish in the tank.

Fascinating! I actually assumed (which goes to show you) that only fish and not fishes were plural.

There are many fishes (not fish) in the sea?  

Nanna

Interesting examples of plural forms! I came across the word "monies" (as the plural form of "money") in a contract and I found it hard to identify the word at first. Then I looked it up in the dictionary and this is what I got:

drawing account

Accounting: Name of the account (in the account books of a sole-proprietorship or partnership firm) which records all monies taken out of the business by the owner or partners.

equity method

Method of accounting used by a parent firm for monies invested in the subsidiaries. The parent firm records the investment in its balance sheet at a valuation that takes into account the profits and losses of the subsidiaries since their acquisition. Also called equity accounting. See also cost method.

Marisa

http://www.englishforums.com/English/MoneyMoniesFoodFoods/ccvgj/post.htm 

http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=286505 

Hi Jacek!

Thanks a lot!!! Very useful information!

Marisa

http://crofsblogs.typepad.com/english/2005/02/fish_or_fishes.html

Canadian usage permits "beer" as a plural; American usage, as far as I know, does not.

Linguists call the line between two such usages an "isogloss" (literally, "same language"). Just as an isobar on a weather map describes a region of equal air pressure, an isogloss describes a region where most people follow a particular usage or pronunciation. In the "beer" example, the isogloss runs right along the US-Canadian boundary.

Similarly, isoglosses separate British "lorry" and North American "truck," and Californian "fender bender" and Tennessee "car smash" ....

I suspect isoglosses also exist between social classes and generations. My generation uses "said" for "said." My students use "like":

"So Crawford is like, 'We have a quiz on Monday,' and I'm like, 'Omigod, I can't be there!"