You are about to read a poem named "Chaos”  by Gerard Nolst Trenité. This poem was written in 1922 - and it was designed to demonstrate how complicated, irregular and fascinating the English spelling and pronunciation can be. 

Can you read it correctly? 

• 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.
• Fe0ffer 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!!!