I have always had great respect for people who learn English as their second language. It’s quite hard to learn because much of it is confusing. I came across this old poem while cleaning out a file, I’ve saved it for years because it is humorous and mind boggling. Fortunately, when I was in school, I loved the drills my English teacher did: “Spelled alike but sounds different” and “Sounds alike but spelled different.” We were challenged to come up with and memorize words that fit the criteria. It helped me become a better reader and writer.
Now, my heart sinks each time I think of what’s happening across our country. Many programs have been cut, programs for children and adults focused on teaching English as a second language. Programs that would give them an opportunity to learn the idiosyncrasies of this complicated language.
English
I take it you already know
of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you
on hiccough, thorough, slough and through.
Well done! And now 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 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,
nor both in bother, broth in brother.
And here is not a match for there,
nor 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 cork and work and card and ward,
and font and front and word and sword.
And do and go, then thwart and cart…
Come, Come, I’ve hardly made a start.
A dreadful language? Why, man alive,
I’d learned to talk it when I was five,
and yet to write it, the more I tried,
I hadn’t learned it at fifty-five.
Anonymous
