It rhymes with ‘plague you’, so it’s like aygg-you.
Edit: Sorry, I’m rude. I should have said well done for that being the only one you weren’t sure of.
Nonsense. I reckon 90% of native English speakers would be able to pronounce all those words correctly.
ah g yu
yes I read and pronounced it all without a stutter or a mistake.
Apart from one.. I did not know what a sward was, had to look it up.
But Im London born, so that probably helps
Why I don’t make fun of people who are trying to learn English. Our language is hugely difficult. As a native speaker I still have problems with certain words and pronunciation
Yeah this is fine I can do th… what the fuck is ‘sward’
Well, not good.
Ague – shivering/sweating illness like malaria.
Sward – a bit of short grass.
saw a post once that said
“It’s pronounced POLISH!”.. still makes me laugh.
Are we including Americans in this stat
Fuck this bullshit. All it does is belittle regional accents.
I failed English and managed it just fine :/
Puhlease anyone with a decent English education can read all these words correctly..
“…I think I did pretty *well”
Ague was fine. I’d never heard of sward
This is only a small part of the poem. All of you saying it’s so easy should try the entire thing and then come back with all your confidence.
Ague
noun (archaic)
malaria or another illness involving fever and shivering.
“as our ancestors knew, the bitter-tasting bark of the willow tree was a cure against the ‘ague’ or malaria”
Sward and Ague are the only 2 words I dont recognise by definition or use.
ague is close to egg in pronunciation. Everyone in rural Ireland knows what sward means because of these guys : [https://grasslandkilkenny.com/images/sward.pdf](https://grasslandkilkenny.com/images/sward.pdf)
That screen shot is only a portion of the entire piece.
Lol put on a beat 🎶 in the background and this sounds like a rap song
Dutch but got all of them except Sward. Is it pronounced as Start?
‘Pretty well’.
the only native speakers are those who were born in England, all the other are just English speakers.
I’m a northerner and I will stubbornly insist on the fact you don’t pronounce grass like graarse
>I had no idea how to pronounce ague, but the rest was easy . I think I did pretty ***well***.
Oh dear.
This is The Chaos by Dutch writer Gerard Nolst Trenité, written in 1920.
new Sorting hat poem is fire!!!! (and not of the Goblet kind)
Wasn’t sure on Sward, defo not a word that’s really used
That comes from the poem: The Chaos, by Gerard Nolst Trenité. It’s a lot longer than that. Look it up. Next time you speak to a non-native English speaker, and you notice them struggling a bit, have pity.
That’s wild they’ve made that poster. They’ve missed out like 70% of the poem. The rest of it gets much harder:
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.
Feoffer 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!!!
Ague, Gue like Goo and Queue combined. Or “Jew” is pronounced with a G, like Gew.
The last word of every odd line rhymes with the last word of the even line after it, so “You” and “Ague”.
Send it to the US, it will be like watching neanderthals discovering fire for the first time.
What constitutes being correct? Different areas of the country pronounce this differently
As the father of a five year old who is currently learning to read can I just say fuck the English language…
I feel that I’ve pronounced them all correctly, yet half of you wouldn’t understand me in my glaswegian dialect 🤣
I’ve studied English for many years and the two words that really got me were “yacht” and “quay”.
And also why do you need “c” when 90% of the time it’s pronounced as “k”, and the remaining C’s are pronounced as “s”?
I only knew how to pronounce ague because of the rhyming in the previous verse
Sward, cloven and ague. Besides that I got it. That probably places me at least in average (I would certainly hope so, English is my native and only language)
Sward????
The only reason I know ague is it appears in the Little House on the Prairie books – the family contract malaria after building their house on the plains near a river with lots of mosquitos. They called the disease “fever and ague”. Laura’s mother thought it was because they ate a wild watermelon.
I’m dyslexic and got everything first time, apart from ague. Well chuffed with myself 😆
Yes to all! Including sward and ague. I love England and our beautiful language.
Ah, but did you say “pronunciation” or “pronunciation”
No clue how I fucked up Britain, also don’t know about ague
Piece of piss.
I did it 🙂
The different accents around the UK would be interesting.
48 comments
It rhymes with ‘plague you’, so it’s like aygg-you.
Edit: Sorry, I’m rude. I should have said well done for that being the only one you weren’t sure of.
Nonsense. I reckon 90% of native English speakers would be able to pronounce all those words correctly.
ah g yu
yes I read and pronounced it all without a stutter or a mistake.
Apart from one.. I did not know what a sward was, had to look it up.
But Im London born, so that probably helps
Why I don’t make fun of people who are trying to learn English. Our language is hugely difficult. As a native speaker I still have problems with certain words and pronunciation
Yeah this is fine I can do th… what the fuck is ‘sward’
Well, not good.
Ague – shivering/sweating illness like malaria.
Sward – a bit of short grass.
saw a post once that said
“It’s pronounced POLISH!”.. still makes me laugh.
Are we including Americans in this stat
Fuck this bullshit. All it does is belittle regional accents.
I failed English and managed it just fine :/
Puhlease anyone with a decent English education can read all these words correctly..
“…I think I did pretty *well”
Ague was fine. I’d never heard of sward
This is only a small part of the poem. All of you saying it’s so easy should try the entire thing and then come back with all your confidence.
Ague
noun (archaic)
malaria or another illness involving fever and shivering.
“as our ancestors knew, the bitter-tasting bark of the willow tree was a cure against the ‘ague’ or malaria”
Sward and Ague are the only 2 words I dont recognise by definition or use.
ague is close to egg in pronunciation. Everyone in rural Ireland knows what sward means because of these guys : [https://grasslandkilkenny.com/images/sward.pdf](https://grasslandkilkenny.com/images/sward.pdf)
That screen shot is only a portion of the entire piece.
Lol put on a beat 🎶 in the background and this sounds like a rap song
Dutch but got all of them except Sward. Is it pronounced as Start?
‘Pretty well’.
the only native speakers are those who were born in England, all the other are just English speakers.
I’m a northerner and I will stubbornly insist on the fact you don’t pronounce grass like graarse
>I had no idea how to pronounce ague, but the rest was easy . I think I did pretty ***well***.
Oh dear.
This is The Chaos by Dutch writer Gerard Nolst Trenité, written in 1920.
Full text (it’s extraordinarily long!): https://ncf.idallen.com/english.html
new Sorting hat poem is fire!!!! (and not of the Goblet kind)
Wasn’t sure on Sward, defo not a word that’s really used
That comes from the poem: The Chaos, by Gerard Nolst Trenité. It’s a lot longer than that. Look it up. Next time you speak to a non-native English speaker, and you notice them struggling a bit, have pity.
That’s wild they’ve made that poster. They’ve missed out like 70% of the poem. The rest of it gets much harder:
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.
Feoffer 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!!!
Ague, Gue like Goo and Queue combined. Or “Jew” is pronounced with a G, like Gew.
The last word of every odd line rhymes with the last word of the even line after it, so “You” and “Ague”.
Send it to the US, it will be like watching neanderthals discovering fire for the first time.
What constitutes being correct? Different areas of the country pronounce this differently
As the father of a five year old who is currently learning to read can I just say fuck the English language…
I feel that I’ve pronounced them all correctly, yet half of you wouldn’t understand me in my glaswegian dialect 🤣
I’ve studied English for many years and the two words that really got me were “yacht” and “quay”.
And also why do you need “c” when 90% of the time it’s pronounced as “k”, and the remaining C’s are pronounced as “s”?
I only knew how to pronounce ague because of the rhyming in the previous verse
Sward, cloven and ague. Besides that I got it. That probably places me at least in average (I would certainly hope so, English is my native and only language)
Sward????
The only reason I know ague is it appears in the Little House on the Prairie books – the family contract malaria after building their house on the plains near a river with lots of mosquitos. They called the disease “fever and ague”. Laura’s mother thought it was because they ate a wild watermelon.
I’m dyslexic and got everything first time, apart from ague. Well chuffed with myself 😆
Yes to all! Including sward and ague. I love England and our beautiful language.
Ah, but did you say “pronunciation” or “pronunciation”
No clue how I fucked up Britain, also don’t know about ague
Piece of piss.
I did it 🙂
The different accents around the UK would be interesting.
Comments are closed.