or so it says on this page regarding the following poem. I recorded myself reciting it, and I’m pretty sure I nailed it. (Except that I flub the first instance of the word “pronunciation” itself! Der.) It occurs to me that it could also be a test of one’s ability to spell English words if you tried to write it down after listening to someone recite it, that would be tricky!
I think most educated English speakers know the vast majority, I’ve highlighted the ones I think are most often missed (or so obscure the word is simply unknown altogether). And several words have accepted alternate pronunciations (leisure, neither- that tricky “ei”)
[Note: I have removed the poem, which was linked to above, to protect the author’s copyright. – twickster]
The whole concept is nonsense, given how many different varieties of English there are, and that no variety is more correct than any other. At best, you meet an arbitrary standard fairly well through accident of birth and early home life; you’d fail badly were the standard from a different region, or put together by a different group.
Dictionaries seem to agree about correct pronunciation, what do you make of that? Accents don’t really change the fundamentals, they just flavor them a little.
What words in this list do you think are correctly pronounced very differently by people from different regions? - do people “regionally” fail to distinguish the way the “ea” is supposed to sound in heard vs. beard, for example? Brits, Texans, New Yorkers and Australians are all going to say “herd” and “beerd”, I’ve never heard of any region that would say “heerd” and “berd” instead, and that’s what the poem is pointing out.
Different versions of English have different standard pronunciations of some words or sounds, but those are exceptions that are still standardized within whole countries, not neighborhoods. (I only recently found out that Brits retain the long “i” of the root noun and emphasize the second syllable in the word “vaginal”. I had no idea.)
Too close to call. My best friend’s name is Carrie and she’s very sensitive to the very-subtle-to-most-ears differences between her name and Kerry, which is the way many people pronounce her name. She doesn’t fuss about it to anyone, she just winces.
Besides, statistically, if you pronounce words differently from 90% of English speakers, you’re an outlier, an anomaly. You aren’t more ‘correct’, you’re just off in your own world pronouncing things in ways most people think of as weird.
True, but that’s not why it’s nonsense. The premise that this is a test of how well you speak is nonsense, as belied by the OP:
What exactly do you mean by “miss”?
What would you (or the website) say about the person who can’t read at all but who learns this poem by simply listening to it and repeating it?
How does decoding orthography say anything about how well you speak? If this is a test of vocabulary knowledge, that’s one thing. But you say that “most educated English speakers know the vast majority…”, so where does this 90% come in?
Look, everyone, I don’t know how many times we are going to have to go over this. English pronunciation in California (particularly as practiced by Stoid) is the most perfect, correct form of English speech there is. It is unaccented; English in it’s divine form. It is the language and pronunciation that Jesus spoke. In fact, Jesus used his magic God-powers to travel through time to listen to Stoid’s speech patterns, and that was how he learned English so He could write the King James bible. If you don’t agree that Stoid is uniquely possessed of that most melodious and flawless speech, you are directly disagreeing with God Himself. The sooner we can all accept this fact, the sooner we can stop having these threads. So let’s everyone get on board here, ok?
Okay, fine, but let’s put that aside and look at the mistaken presupposition of the claim being made. This poem, in fact, is about spelling–not speaking.
The people who actually use the vast majority of these words–as part of their natural vocabulary–rarely mispronounce them. The fact these words have (seemingly) “unreasonable” spellings doesn’t change that fact.
(Of course there are regional pronunciation differences, but that’s not what the problem is.)
I also question whether Melpomene is an English word (Terpsichore has been adopted I guess).
And what are Balmoral and Islington doing there? Not only are they proper nouns (which seems like cheating), but they are spelled pretty much as they sound.
No, it’s not. The poem is pointing out the inconsistencies of English spelling–not that people speak in a strange or “illogical” way. The “ea” is not determining the sound. “EA” is two letters: Ink on paper or pixels on a screen. It does not possess some innate sonic quality that people are trying to follow. It goes the other way. The letters are trying to follow the way that people speak. (And of course there will be inconsistencies, since English has about 21 vowels, and only five vowel letters.)
That’s your problem in a nutshell. How can there be different pronunciations of a sound? If it’s pronounced differently, then it’s not the same sound, is it? There isn’t some theoretical sound that “EA” generates or represents, and that people are trying to produce when they talk. “EA” is just two letters which people use when writing English to represent several different sounds. That’s what the poem is about.
You seem to think that the letters are somehow determining the sounds–that the language originates from the written form. It doesn’t. Sounds are made by lips, tongues, vocal chords, etc. The job of the letters is to represent the sounds that the human physiology makes–as best they can.
Perhaps the reason you think that two letters on a page or screen (ea) possess some core sound value is because of the way we are taught to read as children. But haven’t you ever stopped to think why they teach us that way? It’s because when we learn to read we already know how to speak!
Obviously–and I’m familiar with the previous thread/s. I’d just as soon take my sarcasm either with a little more flavor–or not at all. Like my coffee.
That poem was written by a British person (see the “four”/“Arkansas” and “broad”/“reward” rhymes) probably with RP. Thus stoid’s pronunciation of some of the words will differ from the original intention in that context.
I listened to the recording, and the following pronunciations deviate significantly from how I would say them (I have an RP accent):
sward (same as ‘sword’ but pronouncing the W)
ballet (both syllables have equal emphasis in RP, whereas she emphasizes the final syllable)
bouquet (see ‘ballet’)
croquet (see ‘ballet’)
wont (same as ‘won’t’)
constable (a schwa in the middle not an ‘a’)
plait (‘platt’)
chaise (‘shez’)
Arkansas (we put an ‘oar’ on the end, but without the R sound - same syllable as ‘four’)
dandelion (she says ‘dandilion’ whereas we say ‘dandy-lion’ - there is an ‘ee’ sound in the middle)
All of the above are ‘incorrect’. This should therefore belie there being a ‘correct’ or ‘neutral’ pronunciation, but I suspect that won’t wash here.
