Extra Credit Opportunities
Our Crazy Language
I
take it you already know …
Of
tough
and bough
and cough
and dough.
Others may stumble, but not you,
On hiccough,
thorough, laugh
and through.
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps.
Beware of heard,
a dreadful word
That looks like beard
and sounds like bird.
And dead-it's
said like bed,
not bead.
For goodness sake, don't call it
deed!
Watch out for meat
and
great
and
threat.
They rhyme with suite
and
straight
and
debt.
A moth
is not a moth
in mother,
Nor both
in bother,
broth
in
brother,
And
here is
not a match for there,
Nor dear
and
fear
for
pear
and
bear.
And then there's dose
and
rose
and
lose--
Just look them up--and
goose
and
choose.
And
cork
and
work
and
card
and
ward.
And font
and front
and
word
and
sword.
And
do
and
go,
then
thwart
and
cart.
Come, come, I’ve hardly made a start.
A dreadful language? Man alive,
I'd learned to talk when I was five!
And yet to write it, the more I
tried,
I hadn't learned it at fifty-five.
-Anonymous
