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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!!!
English Pronunciation  by G. Nolst Trenité

The profound unfairness of being seen

The world around me is in Hi-Def once again. This image is not.

For those of you who don’t know the semi-blind experience:
There is nothing like having your good pair of glasses snap in two beyond the repair of even duct tape. You are forced to become more aware of the ‘other’ eyes that you have. You learn to see though memory when so much of what is around you ceases to have definite shape / line. And oh, seeing through memory does not make things more beautiful. The idea is lovely, but just try it. If you have fuzzy memory, you are screwed. It will take you 20 minutes to find the wallet that you did not place in its usual place, though it in still in ‘plain sight.’
Then dealing with people. That is awkward. People’s eyes blur to smudges and you can’t help feeling a profound unfairness of being seen without seeing in return… so there is just no seeing eye to eye with the people you pass on the street or the neighbor next door. They may wave and say hello, but it is very difficult to tell if an apple pie or a shotgun is underneath the greeting. Add to that a language barrier and the whole middle-distant world and beyond goes xeno{ξένος}. I have learned that I am a very frustrated unit when incoming visual data is not clear enough. It is a complete hindrance to my job as a watcher– and I have enough faulty wiring to deal with as it is!
In short, if you have your eyes intact and full functional, be thankful for them. If you have glasses, show the object some love. And don’t break ’em.

Flowers for the Dead

I have to say, I was disappointed with the Day Of the Dead in northern Mexico. They have the chance to celebrate THREE DAYS of DEAD and.. they just haven’t got the sense to do it.
So the occasion turned out to be more like a completely lame St. Valentines Day: Buy last minute flowers and candy, put them on a grave.. go home and drink. (I am guessing that last part, but prolly so true) Some places had altars up for a whole week,which, yes, was very cool, but on the whole, it was a lame experience.

https://ferrebeekeeper.wordpress.com/2011/10/27/the-flower-of-the-dead/  << if  you would like some further reading (and I KNOW you DO) this is a nice write up about the flowers and their link to the holiday. I love that there are bright orange flowers dedicated to the dead- that aren’t anything to do with lilies, tiger or otherwise.