English is Tough.

My native language is Dutch due to the fact that I am born in the Netherlands. At the present time I live in South Africa and I do so for the last 32 years. 

South Africa has two main languages and nine native languages. I dare to say that I am fluent in speaking English, Afrikaans, and Dutch and I have some understanding of a few native words and phrases.

The problem comes in to write these foreign languages correctly. In South Africa most of the educated people speak English and or Afrikaans as their home language. These languages are learned at school.

We still use Dutch as our home language and our children speak Dutch fluently although they are born here in South Africa.

I write my blog in English as most people in the world are able to read this language. However to write my articles in flawless English, it becomes a complete different kettle of fish. My pronunciation is often incorrect there for my spelling is time and again also in accurate. I have to look up words and there synonyms repeatedly and have of course a spell checker. By writing these articles I broaden my vocabulary tremendously.

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 or write it. To help them deal with an array of accents, the verses below were devised. After trying them, a Frenchman said he'd prefer six months at a hard labour camp instead of reading six lines aloud and even trying to write the words right.

Try them yourself.

My dearest creature in creation has to study English pronunciation. I will teach you in my verse, sound 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. Wall doesn't rhyme with shall but whale does with hail! 

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, kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel; Gertrude, German, wind and mind, Scene, melpomene, kind, kindle.

Billet does not rhyme with ballet, Bouquet, wallet, mallet, and 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, glamour and enamor rhymes 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 and 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 gofer but chauffeur does. Mint, pint, senate and sedate, dull, bull, and George ate late.

Scenic, Arabic, Pacific, science, conscience and scientific. Liberty, library, heave and heaven Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.

They 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.

Patel, panel, and canal. Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal. Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair, Senator, spectator, mayor. Tour, but our, succour and four.

Gas, alas, and Arkansas.  Sea, idea, Korea and area.  Maria, malaria. Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.

Doctrine, turpentine, marine. Compare 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, device, aerie and hairy. Face but preface, not efface. Somebody with a lot of phlegm is not phlegmatic. Ass, glass, bass, mass.

Large, but target, gin, give, verging, ought, out, joust and scour, scourging. Ear but early.

Tears do not rhyme with bears. Next week is not to be weak.

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, interdict but indict.

Finally, which rhymes with enough --? Though, through, plough, dough, is it cough or tough?

Hiccough has the sound of cup. Is it Recede or receipt.

“The English language is tough;  a ‘fat chance’ and a ‘slim chance’ are the same thing.”

J. Gustave White

“If the English language made any sense, lackadaisical would have something to do with a shortage of flowers.”

Doug Larson

“If the English language made any sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with fur.”

Doug Larson

“Why do we have noses that run and feet that smell?”

Author Unknown

“English is a funny language; that explains why we park our car on the driveway and drive our car on the parkway.”

Author Unknown

“The word ‘good’ has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man.”

G. K. Chesterton

“I like the word ‘indolence.’ It makes my laziness seem classy.”

Bern Williams

“The two most beautiful words in the English language are ‘check enclosed.’”

Dorothy Parker

“The quantity of consonants in the English language is constant. If omitted in one place, they turn up in another. When a Bostonian ‘pahks’ his ‘cah,’ the lost ‘r’s migrate southwest, causing a Texan to ‘warsh’ his car and invest in ‘erl wells.’”

Author Unknown

“‘I am’ is reportedly the shortest sentence in the English language. Could it be that ‘I do’ is the longest sentence?”

George Carlin

“Rudyard Kipling was fired as a reporter for the San Francisco Examiner. His dismissal letter was reported to have said, ‘I’m sorry, Mr. Kipling, but you just don’t know how to use the English language. This isn’t a kindergarten for amateur writers.’”

Author Unknown

“The English language has a deceptive air of simplicity; so have some little frocks; but they are both not the kind of thing you can run up in half an hour with a machine.”

Dorothy L. Sayers

“What is the shortest word in the English language that contains the letters: abcdef? Answer: feedback. Don’t forget that feedback is one of the essential elements of good communication.”

Author Unknown

“English grammar is so complex and confusing for the one very simple reason that its rules and terminology are based on Latin, a language with which it has precious little in common.”

Bill Bryson

“Making English grammar conform to Latin rules is like asking people to play baseball using the rules of football.”

Bill Bryson

“The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’”

Ronald Reagan

“In my sentences I go where no man has gone before… I am a boon to the English language.”

George W. Bush

I am introducing the word “Lite”. This is the new way to spell “Light”, but with twenty percent fewer letters.

Jerry Seinfeld

“England and America are two countries separated by a common language.”

George Bernard Shaw

“Drawing on my fine command of the English language, I said nothing.”

Robert Benchley

“When I read some of the rules for speaking and writing the English language correctly, I think any fool can make a rule, and every fool will mind it.”

Henry David Thoreau

“I speak two languages: Body and English.”

Mae West

“Opera in English is, in the main, just about as sensible as baseball in Italian.”

H. L. Mencken

“Never make fun of someone who speaks broken English. It means they know another language.”

H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

If there are any spelling clangers or grammar howlers in my articles, please do remember the name of my blog.

These are  two cocktails I share with you to celebrate the creation of my Blog.

African on Acid.

1 1/2 oz watermelon vodka
1/2 oz Midori® melon liqueur

Pour the watermelon vodka and Midori melon liqueur into a cocktail shaker half-filled with ice cubes. Shake briefly, strain into a double-sized shot glass, and serve.


Amnesia.

1 oz. Banana Liqueur
1.5 oz. Cranberry Juice
1.5 oz. Orange Juice
1 oz. Vodka
1 oz. Chambord




Mix ingredients in a glass with ice. Serve as shots in two shot glasses or pour into a larger glass and serve as a drink.