90% of People Can't Pronounce This Whole Poem

AlterEgo · May 24, 2014

90% Of People Can't Pronounce This Whole Poem. You Have To Try It.

If you can pronounce correctly every word in this poem, you will be speaking English better than 90% of the native English speakers in the world.

After trying the verses, a Frenchman said he?d prefer six months of hard labor to reading six lines aloud.

90% Of People Can't Pronounce This Whole Poem. You Have To Try It.

bob saunders · May 24, 2014

I agree with the Frenchman. This is what happens when you take words from more than one language and call them English.

mountainannie · May 24, 2014

it does seem unjust that this languague should have become the world's business language since there is no way to explain this bizarre pronunciation to a foreigner.

jabejuventus · May 24, 2014

This is why when I read a book I have a dictionary at my side (not only for definitions, but for usage and pronunciation too). Don't hold it against me.

jabejuventus · May 24, 2014

Derfish said:
It may sound arrogant but 95% of the time when I don't know a word ina book it isn't in the dictionary either.
Der Fish

No, not arrogant, I'd say admirable, , , , , , , check your dictionary though: I use a big fat Merriam-Webster Collegiate.

davetuna · May 24, 2014

poem (the chaos) was first written in 1922.........very impressive......

jrhartley · May 24, 2014

i noticed a spelling mistake and I am really bad at spelling

AnnaC · May 24, 2014

Derfish said:
Not really, once a long time ago, we had a T-Shirt shop on Ft Lauderdale Beach and one of our best sellers said "I am Chao= 1 unit of chaos. SOld better than the "Ima Beach Bitch" one or any of the others.

I tried to find Ima but no luck :laugh:

I'd like to know what you're reading that the words can't be found in the dictionary

dv8 · May 24, 2014

AnnaC said:
I'd like to know what you're reading that the words can't be found in the dictionary

i read this great and funny gossip page, dlisted. lots of words and expressions there you would not find in a regular dictionary

Xavier_Onassis · May 24, 2014

English is hard to spell for several reasons. There were a variety of different pronunciations in the 1700's when Samuel Johnson wrote the first really authoritative dictionary. Second, Johnson attempted to spell words derived from French in a way similar to their spelling in French at the time (like receive) and words he thought came from German (like believe) and words from Italian (mechanic). Johnson was a learned man for his time, but his knowledge of other European languages was incomplete.

Because of the separation of the Church of England from the Roman Catholic Church in the 1500's, and the idea that every educated person should read the Bible, the English became literate sooner than other nationalities, which made a modernization and standardization of the language essentially impossible. English has between 39 and 45 different sounds, and the Roman alphabet has only 26 letters. The Roman alphabet works very well with Spanish, Portuguese and Italian, but is really not easily adaptable for English. Other alphabets have been invented and proposed, but much attention has not ever been paid to them, they are mere curiosities.

Xavier_Onassis · May 24, 2014

Mendicant does indeed mean beggar. The Jesuits are an order of priests organized in military fashion, like an army. The Franciscans (who are mostly monks) are a mendicant order. Jesuits are not normally mendicants. Their specialty is in teaching.

jabejuventus · May 24, 2014

Xavier_Onassis said:
Mendicant does indeed mean beggar. The Jesuits are an order of priests organized in military fashion, like an army. The Franciscans (who are mostly monks) are a mendicant order. Jesuits are not normally mendicants. Their specialty is in teaching.

Yes, , , , beggar. Spanish translation, , , , mendigo.

jabejuventus · May 24, 2014

JDJones said:
Were you trying to write "ciao?"

Uh oh, , , , here we go again.

london777 · May 25, 2014

bob saunders said:
I agree with the Frenchman. This is what happens when you take words from more than one language and call them English.

I do not see any word which is not authentic English, apart perhaps from some proper nouns. How far back do you want to go to eliminate imports? Old English? That was heavily influenced by Latin long before the Angles even settled in England, so to follow your logic there would be no such language as "Real" English.

I must admit to be stumped by one word, "feoffer", but on looking it up I find it is perfectly good English.
.

bob saunders · May 25, 2014

london777 said:
I do not see any word which is not authentic English, apart perhaps from some proper nouns. How far back do you want to go to eliminate imports? Old English? That was heavily influenced by Latin long before the Angles even settled in England, so to follow your logic there would be no such language as "Real" English.

I must admit to be stumped by one word, "feoffer", but on looking it up I find it is perfectly good English.
.

Really! Two of the first words ( corps, corpse) in the poem are not of English origin; they are both Old French. Actually many military terms in English are originally French, due to Norman rule of Britain.

jabejuventus · May 25, 2014

bob saunders said:
Really! Two of the first words ( corps, corpse) in the poem are not of English origin; they are both Old French. Actually many military terms in English are originally French, due to Norman rule of Britain.

Looking through a positive lens, as I am wont to do, the fact that English is an eclectic language (words derive from other language sources) bodes well in today's global and multi-cultural landscape. In another manner of speaking, foreigners to the language can identify commonalities that allow them to 'hook' more easily into the language, as opposed to not at all.

In addition to Bob's, some other quick examples are, thank you = dank je in Dutch, swine = schwein in German, mister sounds an awful lot like the French monsieur, and then you have the slew of Spanish/English similarities, to wit the Spanish verb (verbos) forms instigar, colaborar, introducir, convocar, etc., nouns, veh?culo, mendigo, plato, copa, etc., adjectives (adjetivos), crystalino, opaco, submergible, and etc.

An example of this language cross-transitioning/identifying/learning is more clearly apparent within the romance languages.

wrecksum · May 25, 2014

Languages are living and evolving entities, stealing and borrowing from many sources so it would be nigh on impossible to say that a particular word, expression or phrase was 'original' to that language.

From Bill Shakespeare to Dylan Thomas writers have been conjuring up new words and giving new meanings to others, which makes it so much fun when the 'Establishment' tries to ban or curb the infiltration process.
Old words are re-cycled and given totally opposite meanings in some cases or a different context completely when transposed to another language or culture.

English is probably the most bastardised (allowed in this case surely?) of them all as it comes from many different original stems and is so globally used and abused.

As I wouldn't understand the language of Chaucer in its original form, I also have problems with Quebecois French or Campesino Spanish or Swiss German but the most incomprehensible to me will remain the idiom from the North of England.Newcastle and up.That's a real foreign language and less than 100 miles from where I grew up.......

Wyeye laddie. Seeyuz safto...

jabejuventus · May 25, 2014

Is that a wee bit of the Gaelic speak me lad? Do you see any parallels between that form and Jamaican English?

dv8 · May 25, 2014

bob saunders said:
Really! Two of the first words ( corps, corpse) in the poem are not of English origin; they are both Old French. Actually many military terms in English are originally French, due to Norman rule of Britain.

it's pointless to argue that. the origin of the word is not important, what matters is that this is proper english NOW.

Xavier_Onassis · May 25, 2014

Polish is a pretty good example of how spelling can be standardized using the Roman alphabet. The truth is that the Cyrrillic alphabet (perhaps with some minor modifications) would be a more logical way to spell Polish, but nationalism and history trumped logic. It is lots easier for Poles to spell Polish (which, like English, has more than 26 phonemes) than for English speakers to spell English. The same seems to be true of Czech, Slovak and all the Scandinavian languages.

90% of People Can't Pronounce This Whole Poem

Administrator

Platinum

Platinum

Bronze

Bronze

Bronze

Gold

Gold

Gold

Gold

Gold

Bronze

Bronze

Bronze

Platinum

Bronze

Bronze

Bronze

Gold

Gold