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Thu, May. 8th, 2008, 10:14 am
Chaos

For those of you who think English pronunciation is easy or logical, I present to you this poem "The Chaos" by Dutch writer, traveler and teacher Dr Gerard Nolst Trenité from 1920.

An excerpt:

Dearest creature in creation
Studying English pronunciation,
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse.

Shoes, goes, does. Now first say: finger;
Then say: singer, ginger, linger.
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, age

A review of the poem notes: Readers will notice that The Chaos is written from the viewpoint of the foreign learner of English: it is not so much the spelling as such that is lamented, as the fact that the poor learner can never tell how to pronounce words encountered in writing (the poem was, after all, appended to a book of pronunciation exercises). With English today the prime language of international communication, this unpredictability of symbol-sound correspond-ence constitutes no less of a problem than the unpredictability of sound-symbol correspondence which is so bewailed by native speakers of English. Nevertheless, many native English-speaking readers will find the poem a revelation: the juxtaposition of so many differently pronounced parallel spellings brings home the sheer illogicality of the writing system in countless instances that such readers may have never previously noticed.

So be sure to read the full poem and the review!

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Thu, May. 8th, 2008 03:54 pm (UTC)
captspastic

As somewhat of a literati, I have to say that ANYONE that thinks "English pronunciation is easy or logical" would have be either a supreme idiot, or someone that TRULY does not have even the most rudimentary grasp of the English language and proper pronunciation. The English language is really fairly complex, particularly to speak. Vowels and constants just have to many lax rules of pronunciation, and combination of syntax word pronunciation. Vowels alone are enough to drive most people mad. Anyone coming from Latin based languages where context can have female and male inflection typically find English very confusing, and rightly so.

It's a great language, but definitely has many drawbacks. It does, however, offer an infinite opportunity FOR inflection, emphasis and feeling. It does, when people use it, and take advantage of the command syntaxes within the structure of sentences, phrases and paragraphs. Sadly though, these days, that just doesn't happen. You translate tone and infliction when you are barely constructing a sentence.

So with that, I'll leave you with.

l8tr d00d!

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