HUM: English is TOUGH stuff!

[Joe Varo]

On Wed, 22 Jan 1997 grip at netcom.com wrote:

> 
> _______________________________________________________________________________
> FORWARDED FROM THE INTERNET . . . . 
> 
>      
> ENGLISH IS TOUGH STUFF
>      
> (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.)
>
> [rather lengthy poem deleted]

You know, every so often I get to thinking about what it might be like for
someone to learn english and a second language.  On the one hand, it would
seem to be rather easy; english words have no gender which must be
memorized and there is very little declension/conjugation or inflection in
general involved -- it's just a matter of vocabulary and grammar, i.e.
word-order.

But then you get to pronunciation...OY!  Now and then I go on a little
rant about english pronunciation...why do these two words, which, but for
one or two letters, are spelled exactly the same, sound so different?!

This poem is a keeper.

Joe