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From: drew@umbc3.UMBC.EDU (Drew Eisenhauer)
Newsgroups: sci.lang,comp.cog-eng,sci.psychology
Subject: Re: Spelling and Perceptual Mode (was: Effects of poor writing?)
Message-ID: <2027@umbc3.UMBC.EDU>
Date: 11 May 89 04:58:37 GMT
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Reply-To: drew@umbc3.umbc.edu.UMBC.EDU (Drew Eisenhauer)
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Organization: University of Maryland, Baltimore County
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Subject: Humorous poem about English orthography

IS ENGLISH THE HARDEST LANGUAGE OF ALL?
 
I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough.
Others may stumble, but not you
On hiccough, thorough, laugh, and through.
 
And cork and work and card and ward,
And font and front and word and sword.
Well done!  And now if you wish, perhaps
To learn of less familiar traps.
 
Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird.
And dead:  it's said like bed and not like 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,
Nor both in bother, broth in brother.
 
And here is not a match for there,
And dear and fear for bear and pear.
And then there's dose and rose and lose--
Just look them up--and goose and choose,
 
And do and go, then thwart and cart.
Come, come, I've hardly made a start!
A dreadful language?  Man alive!
I'd mastered it when I was five.

-- 
      Eric S. Raymond                     (the mad mastermind of TMN-Netnews)
      Email: eric@snark.uu.net                       CompuServe: [72037,2306]
      Post: 22 S. Warren Avenue, Malvern, PA 19355      Phone: (215)-296-5718


-- 
Is not conscience a pair of breeches; though a cover for lewdness 
as well as nastiness, is easily slipt down for the service of both?
-SWIFT
internet: drew@umbc3.umbc.edu bitnet: eisenhauer@umbc