How proficient are you at english? (native speakers welcome!)

[viper37]

https://www.thepoke.co.uk/2016/02/17/english-pronunciation-poem/

If you can pronounce correctly every word in this poem, you will be speaking English better than 90% of the native English speakers in the worldAfter trying the verses, a Frenchman said he'd prefer six months of hard labour to reading six lines aloud, and we'll be honest with you, we struggled with parts of it.

I councur with that part




Here is the poem:
Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds 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.
So shall I! 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, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, 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; clamour
And enamour rhyme 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, 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 deafer.
Fe0ffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.
Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We 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.
Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
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 and device and aerie.
Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
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 and indict.
Finally, which rhymes with enough,
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

[Admiral Yi]

I don't know how to pronounce Melpomene.  There could be more.

[The Brain]

There are likely a few that I would miss, but they seemed mostly familiar.

[PDH]

Better polish my Polish 'cause english is hard.

[viper37]

There are likely a few that I would miss, but they seemed mostly familiar.

taken individually, I can get most of them, but trying to read it as a continuous poem, without making mistakes, that I found to be hard.

[merithyn]

I was maybe 10 lines in before I realized the point the poem was trying to make.

Like Yi, Melpomene is the only one I stumbled on.

[PDH]

I was maybe 10 lines in before I realized the point the poem was trying to make.

Like Yi, Melpomene is the only one I stumbled on.

That is a tragedy.

[mongers]

How proficient are you english? (native speakers welcome!)

Piss poor. 

[Eddie Teach]

I say all those words properly. It's other people who are wrong.

[merithyn]

I was maybe 10 lines in before I realized the point the poem was trying to make.

Like Yi, Melpomene is the only one I stumbled on.

That is a tragedy.

The words just... are.

[Josquius]

I have problems with poems. Through childhood years of reading Tolkein, the Red Wall series, etc... I've developed a habit of my eyes glazing over and skipping ahead whenever I see slightly indented text going on for lines. Poems are hard..

Anyway.
Pronounced correctly according to which rules?
How do I know I've read a word wrong? - surely it I think something is correct that is the one I shall use.

[Duque de Bragança]

RP, obviously. 
Geordies trying to read it could be funny to hear though.

[Syt]

I don't know how to pronounce Melpomene.  There could be more.

Rule of thumb for Greek names IIRC: emphasis on third-last syllable (PO), and no silent syllables, with the last one long-ish, so the common English pronounciation would be something like Mel-PO-mi-nee

[garbon]

Anyway.
Pronounced correctly according to which rules?
How do I know I've read a word wrong? - surely it I think something is correct that is the one I shall use.

While I agree there is a bit of a hierarchy of pronunciations that using language such as 'correct' suggests, I think there are still something things that can widely be considered incorrect.

Like pronouncing fruit like 'frew-it' or Wednesday like 'wed-ness-day'

[Duque de Bragança]

I don't know how to pronounce Melpomene.  There could be more.

Rule of thumb for Greek names IIRC: emphasis on third-last syllable (PO), and no silent syllables, with the last one long-ish, so the common English pronounciation would be something like Mel-PO-mi-nee

English Wiki disagrees partially: (/mɛlˈpɒmɪniː/
Probably easier to pronounce it in Ancient Greek:
Ancient Greek: Μελπομένη, romanized: Melpoménē

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melpomene