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Favorite literary haunts
The English Server
Great Books
The
WWW Virtual Library
Pulitzer Prize Winners
Book Stacks' Poetry
Richard's
Poetry Library
Selected
Poetry by John Donne I'm still looking for his sermons
Shakespeare
Homepage and The
Collected Works of Shakespeare w/search engine
T.S.
Eliot: What the Thunder Said
Into the Wardrobe:
the C. S. Lewis page
Gerard
Manley Hopkins
UC Berkeley College
of Letters & Science
Language
The
Human-Languages Page
The
Labyrinth: Medieval Latin links
Hwæt!
Old English in Context
Bookstores and the book world
Online bookstores
Svoboda's Online
- State College, PA
Amazon.com Books!
Book Stacks
Powell's
Books - Portland, OR Used, new, out of print
About books
(reviews, news, links)
The Whole Wired
Word
Bookwire
BookWeb American
Booksellers Association
The Book Garden
Gallery
Book Stacks' 1997
Poetry Exhibit
Publishers
HarperCollins
Publishers
HarperCollins
San Francisco
Penguin Books
Presses, offline bookstores, related resources
BookWeb bookstore
directories (American Booksellers Association)
Association
of American University Presses
University
of Chicago Press
American
Amateur Press Association Amateur publishers, journalists, printers
Libraries
Library
of Congress
Thought-provoking quotes
Here are a few good places to browse or search to your heart's
content.
Try FRANK's
Quotations and The Quotations
Page
I have the feeling that The
Curmudgeon Quotelist would make Mark very happy (in a Grinchy kind
of way).
Links
that look interesting
but I haven't checked these yet
Banned
Books On-line
Britannica Online
Linguistics
Jokes
|
"Multi-national personnel
at North Atlantic Treaty Organization headquarters near Paris found English
to be an easy language... until they tried to pronounce it. To help them
discard an array of accents, the verses below were devised. After trying
them, a Frenchman said he'd prefer six months at hard labor to reading
six lines aloud. Try them yourself."
English is Tough Stuff
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.
Foeffer 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!!! |