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How Good is Your English?
#1
Alright, the challenge? Read these out loud without screwing up... good luck! (I failed miserably...)

"The Pronunciation Test"

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!!!

"For what is a man, what has he got. If not himself, then he has naught" - Frank Sinatra
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#2
Wow, this was tricky. I stumbled a few times, myself. Didn't see too many new words, though. Or were it through, thru, true, trough? ... Eeeevil. I'll need to print a copy of this. xD Thanks for sharing!
#3
75%pass rate.
Quote: Do you hear the Whisper Men The Whisper Men are near
If you hear the Whisper Men then turn away your ears
Do not hear the Whisper Men whatever else you do
For once you've heard the Whisper Men they'll stop. And look at you.
#4
Tongue 
Tis a tricky test of verbal troughput. Big Grin
[Image: sigtest.png]
Draw some monsters and post em here
http://forum.monstermmorpg.com/Thread-Ro...e-art-only
#5
omg i always fail in English in school and every where
[Image: GildartzSigfinished.png]
Be Blinded By My Prowess
#6
I scrolled down.. saw too many words.

I decided to rap it, which makes it so much easier for me. Right now.. 100% Pass.

-----

Stumbled on Sward.. Never heard that word '-'

------

I say I got.. 65% '-' While listening to Breaking Benjamin.

There are also words I haven't ever said, so that's what dropped me. I haven't seen some words on there before, so in my honest opinion, I failed.

Big Grin
#7
74-76 percent. I am very confused with the words I have never heard of.
Constantly dying yet never dead
[-] The following 1 user Likes SkyRock's post:
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#8
75% i willl say
[Image: ZekromSig.png]

Credits to SparrowHawk
#9
My English is excellent, thank you very much. And this really wasn't that difficult at all, come on people. Tongue
#10
i got to through ! im so angry now >.<
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#11
(2012-01-21, 12:32 AM)Lamb Wrote: My English is excellent, thank you very much. And this really wasn't that difficult at all, come on people. Tongue
Lol it wasn't difficult at all, I just saw words I haven't learned before or saw so I would most likely stumble on them Big Grin
#12
Not really that hard but tricky at some parts
#13
Im no longer american. ._.
Your life just got better. 

You're welcome.

[Image: k29ed.jpg]
#14
Its not hard, its just rapid pronunciation changes.
Quote: Do you hear the Whisper Men The Whisper Men are near
If you hear the Whisper Men then turn away your ears
Do not hear the Whisper Men whatever else you do
For once you've heard the Whisper Men they'll stop. And look at you.
#15
Bump, more people ought to do this
[Image: GildartzSigfinished.png]
Be Blinded By My Prowess
#16
OMG, 80% i know
#17
eh messed up on four words....and since Im pretty sure there are more then 200 of them....98%  for me :p

edit: total word count for this challenge is 588...

so I scored 99% (100% if you round up at the halfway mark :p)
[Image: images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQjk8wO2t6sHmKt_B-_FtO...vOjUyihBSc]
#18
There were too many words for my puny dog brain...
Resident noob
#19
(2012-01-21, 12:33 AM)SparrowHawk Wrote:
(2012-01-21, 12:32 AM)Lamb Wrote: My English is excellent, thank you very much. And this really wasn't that difficult at all, come on people. Tongue
Lol it wasn't difficult at all, I just saw words I haven't learned before or saw so I would most likely stumble on them Big Grin

me too
#20
I guess I know what Im doing
#21
Ah, Slavic struggles with English grammar. I feel you.
#22
my english very bad

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