If You Can Correctly Pronounce Every Word in This Poem, You’re Among the English-Speaking Elite

The Chaos (by G. Nolst Trenité, a.k.a. “Charivarius”; 1870–1946)

Dearest creature in creationStudying English pronunciation,

I will teach you in my verseSounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse

I will keep you, Susy, busy,Make your head with heat grow dizzy.

Tear in eye your dress you’ll tear,So shall I! Oh, hear my prayer,

Pray, console your loving poet,Make my coat look new, dear, sew it!

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).

Made has not the sound of bade,Say said, pay-paid, laid, but plaid.

Now I surely will not plague youWith such words as vague and ague,

But be careful how you speak,Say break, steak, but bleak and streak.

Previous, precious, fuchsia, via,Pipe, snipe, recipe and choir,

Cloven, oven, how and low,Script, receipt, shoe, poem, toe.

Hear me say, devoid of trickery:Daughter, laughter and Terpsichore,

Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles.Exiles, similes, reviles.

Wholly, holly, signal, signing.Thames, examining, combining

Scholar, vicar, and cigar,Solar, mica, war, and far.

From “desire”: desirable — admirable from “admire.”Lumber, plumber, bier, but brier.

Chatham, brougham, renown, but known.Knowledge, done, but gone and tone,

One, anemone. Balmoral.Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel,

Gertrude, German, wind, and mind.Scene, Melpomene, mankind,

Tortoise, turquoise, chamois-leather,Reading, reading, heathen, heather.

This phonetic labyrinthG