Thirty days hath September,
April, June, and November;
All the rest have thirty-one
Excepting February alone:
Which hath but twenty-eight, in fine,
Till leap year gives it twenty-nine.
Another trick is to count off the months on your knuckles and the “valleys” between them – “knuckle months” have 31 days and “valley months” don’t. (If you can’t remember that February is the only one with less than 30 days, then I can’t help you. :D) From one end of your hand to the other takes you to July; then start on the same knuckle for August and head back.
I trip up around G-L, too! It’s the H-I-J-K sequence that gets me. I also have to sing T-U-V-W, because I always want to put W in front of V for some reason.
I remember the alphabet song, but never have problems with the alphabet, so I don’t have t’ sing it. Ditto with th’ calendar, an’ all. Maybe I already had it by th’ time Sesame Street cruised onto th’ screens.
Kids are still learning that one today - the Tzeroling whipped it out on our return trip from Pittsburgh this weekend. She got the whole damn thing, too.
Out of curiosity, Ice Wolf, how does the alphabet song go in New Zealand? It can’t be “Q, R, S, T, U, Ved” … can it? Do the last two lines just not rhyme, or is the whole thing written differently?
“Ved”? No, I think they let that one go in th’ rewrite.
The “Alphabet Song” that made it down here in th’ 1970s was American, so it had “Zeeeee…” before the final verse. We stalwart Kiwis, true to th’ Mother tongue, resist this, of course.
I have to sing it to get it right. I’d never be able to recite it backwards though. I can also recite the Greek alphabet. Though I have to recite it quick else I get caught up in some of the letters.
