HINTS ON PRONUNCIATION FOR FOREIGNERS

I take it you already know of tough, bough, cough and dough?

Let's try hiccough, thorough, laugh, and through.

Beware of heard, a dreadful word that looks like beard and sounds like bird.

And dead: it's said like bed, not bead and please don't call it deed.

Watch out for meat and great and threat

because they rhyme with suite, straight and debt.

A moth is not a moth in mother.

Nor is both in bother or broth in brother.

Here does not match there and neither does dear, fear, bear and pear.

Then there's dose and rose and lose.

Just look them up and you will find goose and choose,

cork and work, card and ward, font and front, word and sword,

do and go, and thwart and cart.

Come, come, I've hardly started! A dreadful language it is to have to learn.

Man alive!

To think we all mastered it when we were five!

Anon.

~It is truly a thousand wonders any of us learned how to read. ~

Remember: that is read and not read (pronounced-red.)

Just typing this blog made my head (not pronounced like bead) hurt.

I taught first grade for 26 years and it

is amazing that all of my babies knew how to read on

First Grade level or higher (not pronounced like eight) before they left my class

(exceptions of course were those with severe learning disabilities.)