THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE CRAZY ENGLISH WORDS
A rhythmic poem using many of the irregular-pronunciation English words.
I know a young neighbor named Sue,
Who asked me one day, “Is English strange to you?”
I said, “Well, people say learning it is tough,
With through, though, and thought, that’s reason enough!”
She said, “If it’s tough, is it also rough?
And why does a cough never rhyme with bough?”
I said, “That’s a question that troubles us all,
Like why we say talk, but the L doesn’t call.”
We walk past the chalk by the old village school,
Where a singing choir makes learning seem cool.
The woman and women are laughing with joy,
While a young little neighbor plays drums like a toy.
A knight with a knife once knocked on a door,
He bent down and bumped his poor knee on the floor.
He said, “Is it honest, can someone explain
Why know starts with k but we never say ‘k-nain’?”
A colonel marched past in a bright blue coat,
A chef with a recipe scribbled a note.
A dancer from ballet leaped high in the air,
While a poet wrote rhymes in a rocking chair.
“Would, could, and should,” sang the crowd in the square,
“But none rhyme with good though the spelling seems fair!”
The world is full of such words that confuse,
Like blood, flood, and door, or lose and choose.
A scientist studied the sounds in the room,
While fog rolled around like a soft silver plume.
He measured the height, the weight, and the length,
Then tested the breadth and the strength.
“Don’t worry,” he said, “if the spelling seems odd.
English was built in a curious way by a crowd.
With French, Latin, German, and sailors at sea,
It borrowed strange sounds for you and for me.”
So people who learn it should laugh at the test,
For rhyme makes remembering words much less stress.
Read through them, sing through them, say them aloud—
Soon tricky words won’t seem nearly so proud.
And if one day someone asks what to do,
When English looks strange and confusing to you,
Just grin like the neighbor who sang in the rain: