A chaotic poem about English pronunciation

Is this the final boss of English poetry?
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Hi, Al. This video is a dub of a Tumblr meme / poem by Gerard Nolst Trenité called "The Chaos", about irregularities in English spelling and pronunciation. Please show it to people who will like it. Thank you.

[@JeaneyCollects]

Is this the final boss of English poetry?

[@The_REAL_WannabeCake]

I think so

[@gihi3513]

Yes

[@queenoforeos3057]

Not since the accident.

[@pokemonweeaboopikachuninja8745]

Yes

[@cattenaxbee]

yep

[@ironclad9498]

It's amazing how the brain for English speakers instantly make you say the correct things unless it's a word you don't know

[@velvetbees]

Yes, but a couple times he was too fast, because you know it was not his first time through. This would be fun to memorize. No, it would be all seven levels of hell. I am proud I memorized the Jabberwocky poem. That's plenty for me.

[@Beainkle]

I noticed that while learning Italian as an English speaker. I’ve learned to chill out on getting the details and instead let those ‘filer words’ just sort of flow in my brain.

[@eclipses1003]

How do you pronounce e-y-e-s?

[@Anaea]

@@eclipses1003 e-yes

[@oofnoob10323]

@@eclipses1003eeeeeeeeeeeeeeessss

[@Hevymin]

The sheer agony I felt checking the progress bar to see I was only half-way through the video

[@blending_in]

💀 Same here but I wasn't even half way through yet, will haunt my nightmares tonight for sure

[@shytendeakatamanoir9740]

And it took longer, because I needed to check back the pronunciation (I still got no idea how much query and very differs! Like, it's different, sure, but... Like,the R is pronounced different? But R is a letter I won't touch with a ten meter pole, because screw the alphabet for letting a single letter have so many different variations!)

[@boombeembum]

@@blending_in I checked at 0:30 because I thought it was 6 lines 💀

[@Banana_Fusion]

@@boombeembum 😂😂😂

[@bobbymoss6160]

I stopped after 90 sec, this is the longest jeaney video ever, and it's pure agony and torture. Never again.

[@robertsummers3386]

It's ironic how a Frenchman said he'd rather do hard labor than say a fraction of this poem, when his ancestors are partially to blame for this monstrosity of a language.

[@the11382]

Or English is a continuation of a thousand year tradition of annoying the French. "English is badly spoken French."

[@MS-qx9uw]

I’d say they’re the single largest contributor to the stated monstrousness

[@jeremielarin1979]

You were supposed to adopt the entirety of french. Not just a quarter.

[@axelthizon2419]

Oh we know but that was never the intention. As one of the most illustrious Frenchman said: What is English? Badly pronounced French. And boy was he right. I'll see you in the mines.

[@robertsummers3386]

@@axelthizon2419 It probably would've just been weird sounding German if not for the Hundred Years War, but of course the Frenchman calls English "Badly pronounced French" like there's no bias to that at all 😂

[@rainthevaporeon7852]

this feels less like a poem but a sort of words all kidnapped together and forced to form such amalgamation

[@erikvale3194]

You didn't submit a assignment. You submitted a hostage situation.

[@wtz_under]

@@erikvale3194*an assignment

[@Cheesemonkey231]

You submitted Mutually Assured Destruction

[@echelonchi]

That would be the English language in a nutshell.

[@thekhushimeena]

So true 😂, I agree ✋✋

[@sabinatsang]

Googling the original poem and finding out it's even longer nearly killed me.

[@nininyoko13]

WHAT

[@GrinningJest3r]

​@@nininyoko13Not just longer, it has over double the length. This video has 112 lines. The full version has 272. It's titled "The Chaos" by Gerard Nolst Trenité

[@nininyoko13]

@@GrinningJest3r oh it's chaos alright XD

[@edmis90]

omfg

[@sketchyskies8531]

It’s what

[@jalfire]

I imagine a parallel universe where Dr. Seuss was evil and wrote something like this to scare kids from the English language

[@grben9959]

Don't malign Seuss. He's a sweet soul who only needed 50 words to pen Green Eggs and Ham

[@vaimantobe3034]

The fox with the sox

[@nathangamble125]

Maybe as revenge for people mispronouncing his name. It's supposed to be pronounced like "soyes", but everyone pronounces it "soos".

[@conorfromouterspace]

@@nathangamble125 I pronounce it "Seaus"

[@calanon534]

He WAS evil, though. I think you mean villainous.

[@thedragonofcanada6659]

For anyone wondering, this poem is titles "The Chaos" by Gerard N. Trenité, written in 1922.

[@Ocro555]

thanks

[@the11382]

This poem sounds like it would only work with a few dialects of English.

[@morbidsearch]

​@@the11382 Yeah four and Arkansas don't rhyme if you're from Arkansas

[@mzmendy]

Thank you

[@SandyL0uise]

Thank you. It should have been in the description.

[@tsup2]

I am lost for words how good this is. Whoever created this poem is way too good at their job.

[@manichairdo9265]

Very clever comment - lost for words. 😂😂😂

[@TVY2013]

This is what someone else wrote in the comment section: "For anyone wondering, this poem is titles "The Chaos" by Gerard N. Trenité, written in 1922."

[@tsup2]

@@TVY2013 A fitting title.

[@asdfasdf-dd9lk]

Fun fact: a lot of how we try to work out how ancient words were pronounced, is though seeing what people thought rhymed in preserved written down poems.

[@bonaaq86]

So we have no idea how the first syllables sounded in old English? Lol

[@asdfasdf-dd9lk]

@@bonaaq86 We do know now, partially because we can look at rhymes, and other such things. We even do it in the modern day without thinking, for instance, if I say "I pronounce garage like porridge", that tells you all the information you need to imagine how I sound saying that word, without ever hearing it said.

[@shytendeakatamanoir9740]

​@@asdfasdf-dd9lkNo, I'm just more confused. Do you pronounce garage like porridge? Porridge like garage? An entirely different pronunciation all together? Granted I'm not a native, and this poem messed my brain so badly you could tell me basketball and fish are pronounced the same and I would have no choice but to trust you on that one...

[@Rev_Erser]

@@shytendeakatamanoir9740 x=y-1 but what is y?

[@arsena5209]

​@@Rev_Erserbut what is x??

[@MsDormy]

I applaud anyone who has learned our rich and inconsistent language as a second or third to their native one.

[@truelingoism]

if by rich you mean latin and french infused, then ig you're right

[@dustdust9508]

Thanks 😊 although my mother tongue is way worse, its Polish, need i say more

[@dustdust9508]

​@@truelingoism this literally makes no sense, you listed two latin languages and english is germanic so obviously its base is something else than latin and french. But go off queen, who cares about facts

[@Pingimaster]

well "dankjewel"!

[@ericonion3561]

Thanks, but it wasn't very hard to learn 😅

[@novawinchester3821]

It says a lot about me that I genuinely enjoyed reading that and thought of it as a fun brain teaser. Once you catch onto the rhyme scheme, some of the pronunciation becomes a no-brainer. The pacing of it is really well done as well. It helps to actually read it aloud!

[@MrsRedMink]

Cringe

[@echognomecal6742]

From Wikipedia: "The Chaos" is a poem demonstrating the irregularity of English spelling and pronunciation. Written by Dutch writer, traveller, and teacher Gerard Nolst Trenité (1870-1946) under the pseudonym of Charivarius, it includes about 800 examples of irregular spelling. "A mimeographed version of the poem in Harry Cohen's possession is dedicated to "Miss Susanne Delacruix, Paris", who is thought to have been one of Nolst Trenité's students. The author addressed her as "dearest creature in creation" in the first line, and later as "Susy" in line 5." "Gerard Nolst Trenité...a Dutch observer of English...best known in the English-speaking world for his poem The Chaos, which demonstrates many of the idiosyncrasies of English spelling and first appeared as an appendix to his 1920 textbook Drop Your Foreign Accent: engelsche uitspraakoefeningen....(the) subtitle of the book means "English pronunciation exercises.' (This title has the pre-1947 Dutch spelling engelsche instead of the currently accepted usage Engelse.)"

[@greebj]

Does this mean we can cancel this monstrosity as the product of a toxic male teacher with a 'problematic' crush on a female student, and henceforth save all English students?

[@wtz_under]

it is absurd, after all, english had a long history of cultural exchanges

[@chazaqiel2319]

At an exam for an English Linguistic course, I once described the history of the language as "an orphan changing foster homes every few months, with foster homes being the influence of foreign languages." The professor couldn't stop laughing for how accurate a metaphor that was XD

[@billiamswartz2355]

That’s amazing

[@corpsehandler5321]

this deserves way more likes

[@hariman7727]

Also a thief that repeatedly robbed other languages blind.

[@Corndog_Enthusiast]

More like a bunch of cultures came together and threw some shit into a big pot, stirred it, then called it good. They way english is now, is not it‘s fault. It‘s all the Romans, Germans, Vikings, and and Normans that came to the British isles that screwed it up.

[@MatthewSmith-sz1yq]

Its honestly hilarious that English ended up being the national standard, because it is one of the hardest languages to learn. Speaking it isn't too difficult, but there are zero grammatical rules, only guidelines with tons of exceptions. Its crazy, because I am a native English speaker, so I kind of just grew up assuming it was normal to have wildly inconsistent grammar rules, pronunciations of certain spellings, etc, then I find out that nope, English is just a hot mess. Mad respect to anyone who has to learn English as a 2nd language, because its like learning 5 languages that have been blended into 1. I think the only "popular" language that is harder to learn is Mandarin, because the same words have drastically different meanings depending on how you pronounce them (kind of like how in English, you go higher in pitch at the end of a question, to indicate a question). Other languages have a bit of this, but Mandarin does it a ton, and the different meanings have nothing in common. I've never experienced it myself, but a buddy of mine was trying to learn it, and apparently unless your pronunciation and verbal grammar is perfect, you are unintelligible. Its not even just that you will ask for the wrong thing, your sentence structures will completely fall apart.

[@profdrsabschnaak2852]

As a non-native speaker I don't even know what 70% of these mean. This is pure evil

[@rindoe9253]

As a native English speaker, there were a LOT of words I didn’t know. Don’t feel bad haha

[@jameskowanko7574]

Some of these are words which aren't in use anymore, some are proper nouns - so the names of places. Hiccoughs isn't actually the correct spelling anymore, we use the more phonetic 'hiccups.'

[@hairclipboy340]

Don’t worry, most native English speakers don’t know what those words mean either, much less how to spell them ,:)

[@shytendeakatamanoir9740]

Because your brain must be made of porridge to understand the English language (Is that a rhyme? I don't know anymore!)

[@Minalkra]

@@jameskowanko7574 I still type/write it hiccoughs. Because fuck readability, if I had to memorize that fucking spelling back in the 80's I'm going to fucking use it.

[@rosiefinchXD]

Ngl this was so fun to turn off the sound and pronunce on my own, I tripped up a bit bit but it was such a roll it made it awesome

[@shotgunninja543]

English pronunciation rule: That's just how we say it. Everything else, superfluous.

[@eineperson9849]

Am a non-native speaker. Our English teacher showed us this poem in class once. You could see the demonic light in his eyes as we all failed to pronounce the words correctly

[@Apostate_ofmind]

monster

[@SpaceLobster21]

@@Apostate_ofmindof the best variety 😈

[@thefalloutlord]

As an actual native speaker, i failed a speaking portion of a practice test given to people who want to learn to speak english

[@darkstarr984]

Oh no, he’s evil. I would’ve read this when I was 12 if I’d found it because I had an intense interest in English words then.

[@heirofthenazareen3812]

@@thefalloutlord Hilarious. :-)

[@sirkorm948]

“You want to go, mate” changes quite a lot without the comma

[@raidcrhonos]

😂

[@Tjalve70]

I don't like Australians. They're always trying to mate with you.

[@davidthecommenter]

capitalization means the difference between "Helping your Uncle Jack off a horse" and "helping your uncle jack off a horse"

[@top-notanalysis4942]

And "therapist" changes more with a misplaced space

[@Anonymous4045]

Good ole "Let's eat kids!" vs "Let's eat, kids!"

[@elexi_blade]

Can we just appreciate, that it ends in "My advise is to give up"🤣

[@Neil.Menezes]

Advice * 😊

[@fluffycloud9]

Except it doesn’t end, because the original poem is twice as long as this video shows 🫠

[@RClipsGaming101]

Several things to take away from this. 1st is that I recognized a bunch of words that I just so happen to use in casual conversation on the daily. So that's cool.😅 2nd is that this actually sounds quite pleasing to the ear despite it literally devolving into a hodgepodge of different words that are hardly ever used. 3rd is that I accidentally read "dark abyss" from 4:58 as "dark dumbass". 😅😅😅😅 4th is that this either proves that the English language doesn't actually match the speech patterns of the average human. Or society is just slowly getting so stupid that we can't even fathom the idea of complex words in the Native language that we speak. 5th (spoiler alert for the last one) It's both.😢😢 Thank you for coming to my TED talk.😅😅

[@Smonkey66]

If you're American, your opinion is invalid 🤦‍♂️🤡

[@TheRewasder97]

As I've heard before, the problem with english pronunciation is that English is not a language, it is three different lenguages, one of top of each other, in a trenchcoat.

[@themisfitowl2595]

American English is essentially a melting pot with bits of other languages thrown into it.

[@Merrsharr]

And they have two more languages in the pockets

[@lindickison3055]

Love that description!

[@mohawkmaster5728]

English is not a language, it is an index of multiple languages that you cannot use in their respective dialects

[@wandererlovelace4016]

And it beats up other languages in dark alleyways and rifles through their pockets for spare grammar and loose vocabulary

[@weegomo]

I like to say that while English is one of the languages with the least rules, it is almost certainly the one with the most exceptions to said rules

[@marvinh3357]

nah, you never had to learn french. They have the most rules but still make an exception for everything.

[@duckdeity9450]

Welsh has entered the chat

[@ROMCADRANCH]

Yeah bro, like inversion, imparatif, masc and fem, futur proche, passe compose. All kinds (and I have an exam about it)​@@marvinh3357

[@DimkaTsv]

I will admit that British pronounciation just triggers me in some way. They emphasize ough so much. And these inconsequential vowels that are said differently compared to similar words... WHY?! English accents are extremely different from each other between english speaking countries or even regions (like USA, UK, India, Ireland and so on), so i am surprised that there are still solid rules on how to read some stuff anyways (and of course these rules are British). ... And here i am speaking Russian with around 200'000 "dictionary words" (up to 700'000). Granted i bet significant part of those are some weird word forms, rather than unique words. But these words are to teach us how to write them, not how to read them! ... "dictionary word" for us mean that you either cannot check word by any rule, as it either is exclusion or just have no check-word... Or ruling on word formation is obscure enough so only linguistics specialists study them. Meaning other people just need to remember these instead. At school we are studying only around 1600 of those or so. Most of others come from books, practice or intuition.

[@knuckleburger]

Hear, hear

[@tomasrikona4021]

Fantastic! Some real effort went into that and it is very much appreciated. Brilliant. All it did was remind me why i love the English language so much its just versitle like the contortionist of languages.❤❤

[@josephinebennington7247]

It’s got to the point in my long life of intimate native familiarity with spoken English, that I now, for fun, deliberately mis-pronounce such words in the sounds of the words with similar spellings.

[@sarosenna5850]

They should put this in classrooms. It's actually a fairly useful learning aide.

[@goodboi1725]

“Welcome back to English 101! If you couldn’t already tell, this language is incredibly inconsistent despite being considered a national standard. This is why I have pulled up this poem to help you practice a majority of the words you will ever hear or use in your life. Good luck.”

[@januszbogumil]

I actually saw this on a poster in an elementary school classroom. I don't remember it being this long

[@dawsie]

@@januszbogumilit would have been the condensed version. There are other poems that we had at school when I was 8 but for the life of me all I can remember from it it is mice are not mice’s but mouses a moose is not mooses I just can not remember it at all. But it was a right tongue twister and mind bending 😹😹😹

[@januszbogumil]

@@dawsie that makes sense. I just remember the beard and heard bit

[@XbunieXx2]

My classmates would be crying tbh

[@ElectroTherapyFTSoul]

What's worse is that sometimes you have different regional pronunciations, and they're both considered officially correct. 1) Jeaney pronounced "plait" to rhyme with the word "splat," but it's also pronounced like "plate." 2) "Wont" can be pronounced like the contraction "won't," but it's also pronounced like "want."

[@swapertxking]

i've heard and been taught to pronounce Plait as Play.

[@BrooksMoses]

I think what's even worse is when dialects will retain multiple pronunciations and switch between them depending on how much the word is emphasized. Well, that, and the fact that different dialects also distinguish sounds differently, so whether Mary, marry, and merry are distinct is not a universal thing. Likewise, your second example is meaningless in my dialect because all three are pronounced essentially the same. Unless I am emphasizing the words, that is.

[@frafraplanner9277]

@@BrooksMoses And "haunt" and "aunt" (2:12) are pronounced with the same vowel in the western half of the United States (cot-caught merger)

[@jakebarry8456]

Some people tend to add the an "S" to the end of arkensas' pronunciation, but that tends to be just a thing some people prefer

[@nikhilgarg9618]

In British English dandelion is pronounced differently.

[@jan-pi-ala-suli]

dearest creature in creation, also known as the chaos, is one of the coolest poems in my opinion

[@ashaleewai8735]

What a great find! Incredible.

[@Tjalve70]

I am not a native English speaker. But I consider myself to speak very good English. There were words in this poem that I had never before heard pronounced. And while I think I could have pronounced about 90% of the words correctly, I would have no chance at getting to 100%.

[@shytendeakatamanoir9740]

"Indict" is the one who supprised me the most. It turns out I had only seen it written, and never heard it out loud

[@The_Fool_.]

I had the same results which would be around %90 to %95 percent but i did have some problem pronouncing some words same as the comment on top of mine

[@confusionthe2nd51]

I’m also a non-native English speaker, and I failed to pronounce about two words of that poem correctly. I’m quite proud of myself really.

[@jessy1982]

I'm a native speaker, and some of his pronunciations were more an accent rather than a hard rule really. So I'd say some of them differently and it wouldn't be wrong.

[@jessy1982]

An obvious one would be "aunt" and "grant" pronounced differently between british vs american. For american it would be something like gr ANT (the insect) and ANT (again the insect), then british the way it is in the video (Awnt and Grawnt).

[@victoriandino]

If I was a teacher and had a student make fun of another student for mispronouncing something, especially if it was because English was not the latter’s first language, I would make them recite this poem.

[@theoscout9205]

You are an idol and deserve the world

[@Quotenwagnerianer]

By heart!

[@sophiachalloner8951]

👏👏👏👏👏

[@victoriandino]

@@Quotenwagnerianer I think it might even be funnier if it was the first time they saw the poem because they would have to stumble through reading it

[@Quotenwagnerianer]

@@victoriandino True.

[@mihaelamcrae8770]

I absolutely loved this!

[@geedub2019]

Never heard this before, definitely makes you more respectful of other nationalities that have learned English. Especially when you consider all the words there is for the same thing plus slang words for different regions/countries etc.

[@TheKz262]

Pretty sure you just activated at least 15 super soldiers

[@ukamikazu]

Activation Code Received Colonising world For King and Country

[@mollusckscramp4124]

Or woken some leviathan creature...

[@Iamlurking504]

Or started the rebirth of the empire...

[@Apostate_ofmind]

😂😂😂

[@Jx_-]

Suddenly, Jimmy Fallon doesn't feel like laughing

[@romikim4548]

Many words that i don’t know of, thank you for your work. What a work!

[@caroljordan2886]

The anticipation of the next line is agony. This was a wonderful challenge. Thanks

[@budbutterson9577]

"Now class, what message was the author trying to convey in this poem?" -Side note, I absolutely loved that poem. Honestly. It was very clever, and the rhyme schemes were almost always on point. Bravo to Trenité!

[@richi2026]

That English is a stupid language

[@TeenyTonnie]

“pain”

[@__Hanasei__Levinus__]

the frustration of knowing that the pronunciations for these words, many of which are also unknown to a number of people, are misconstrued in everyday life -or- in specific events where we embarrass ourselves in front of other people for showing how stupid we looked to some people, regardless of their importance to us, because fuck adolescence and hormones and grade school and high-school life... all, in a form of poetic writing.

[@themustardman219]

"You probably suck at advanced English"

[@AstroNinja1]

raises hand "the message is that English class is pointless because 90% of the language doesn't follow the rules we're taught."

[@rosesonmygrave9290]

As a Frenchwoman, I thought at first "Well that sounds easy enough!" after the first few verses, then started to agree with my fellow Frenchman 😂

[@bubbyt]

As a native English speaker, I agree with the Frenchman.

[@michaelheliotis5279]

As a native English speaker, I think the French are not ones to talk. ❤

[@jdb47games]

@@michaelheliotis5279 French pronunciation is fairly consistent, so that aspect of it is not a major problem for non-native speakers.

[@michaelheliotis5279]

@@jdb47games English pronunciation is also fairly consistent once you know all the rules behind it, there's just more of them and they include rules from several other languages along with adaptations into English which are perfectly intuitive if you are familiar with all those other languages. If you aren't familiar with the French rules, it will be just as difficult to pronounce a word of French as if you don't know the English rules.

[@SogonD.Zunatsu]

​@@michaelheliotis5279Are you fluent in French?

[@Serai3]

The great thing about this poem is how often the placement of the words tells you how it should be pronounced. The rhythm is established early on, so you know where the emphasis goes, and it often ends a line with an obvious word so you'll know how the one at the end of the next line goes. Lastly, if you grew up reading a lot, and owned a dictionary, not that many words will be difficult. I got about 95% of them right on the first reading years ago (I'm a real bookworm and I've always had a dictionary in my collection), and I've shown it to friends over the years just to see them struggle, LOL.

[@rachels6808]

I love these!!

[@crewl1020]

Finally found it again! My english teacher back in school bet 50€ that no one would try to memorize all of it and recite it in class. I was crazy enough to do it. It was a fun challenge

[@user-ly4yp8ml2i]

👍❤️

[@Ugeybruh]

Ain't no way you memorized all this for 50€💀

[@crewl1020]

@@Ugeybruh I did :D my teacher thought no one would even try to do it and he was really surprised when I proved him wrong :D i felt challenged

[@Ugeybruh]

@@crewl1020 you're a madman💀. Did you get the 50€ tho?

[@crewl1020]

@@Ugeybruh yeah, I got it :D but I had to recite it in another one of his classes again 😅

[@actuallyjake7672]

i'm from poland. our teacher in the primary school-i believe it was 5th grade? so we were about 10 years old at the time-forced us into learning this. word for word. and then each of us had to recite this in front of the entire class. granted, most had to learn just 12 verses of it. as someone who had been very insistent on becoming fluent in english as soon as possible, i learnt thrice that so that i could get the best mark possible i genuinely snorted so hard when the first line "dearest creature of creation" showed up on my screen right now-i can still recall the whole first part of the poem from memory good times lmao

[@nevan2201]

Your teacher is definitely a secret psychotic murderer😂

[@er4din903]

Hey, as far as I can tell you made it, your dream came true.

[@mrscechy8625]

Well, the Polish language isnt much better

[@nikiTricoteuse]

Good for you. I fell in love with the books of ltalo Calvino, an impossibility difficult author, when l lived in ltaly. I used to translate them sentence by sentence, looking up then pencilling in each word l didn't know. Once l understood that sentence l'd do the same with the next. Then I'd reread them both and so on until l had understood the paragraph, then the chapter, then the book. It took forever but, it was so worth it and my vocabulary was AMAZING. The Italian friends that knew l was a foreigner used to say my vocabulary was better than theirs and others usually never realised l was foreign.

[@michaelterry1000]

If you wrote that comment and English is not your primary language, then all that I can say is your teachers were right. Recently a German relative of mine married a polish girl. I had to make a speech in German. I tried to include one sentence in Polish, Gratulujemy ślubu i witamy w naszej rodzinie Just learning how to properly pronounce those few words was a battle and I don’t know if I really got it right.

[@56nickrich]

I stuck around and what I found was that this poem's quite profound. I missed a few so just like you I'll work on using rhymes here too.

[@paolamura3497]

Loved this!!!

[@LabRat8899]

The poem is literally named “The Chaos,” so that should tell you how crazy it is. And it’s over 100 years old!

[@mars-jr5uu]

Hii lab rat

[@ABC1701A]

Maybe but easy to say, and I got all the pronunciations correct as well.

[@LHWK_RHC]

As a former English teacher, I’m extremely impressed with Jeaney. Also, I have new found respect for people who can speak English as a second language fluently.

[@Maw0]

Native English speaker here. I'll even go as far to say as any person, native or not, will have my respect if they can read this.

[@helyphion]

I definitely can't pronounce every word in this poem right, but I also struggle with saying things correctly in my native language... so maybe I'm just dumb :P

[@Maw0]

@@helyphion You're not, well, at least if you are dumb, it's definitely not because you can't pronounce words the vast majority of native English speakers never heard of.

[@AlexanderrRobinEvans]

In my high school‘s theatre group, our Shakespeare play one year was “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” and I found out on opening night that the person who played Puck was not a native English speaker. I actually could not believe it, she was such a class clown type and spoke with so much inflection and made jokes all the time and was generally very expressive and talkative, she was using whatever slang was the trend at the time, and to play THE MAIN CHARACTER IN A SHAKESPEARE PLAY?? I couldn’t believe it, I would never be able to do that, I was so impressed.

[@user-oj1jk5nc2j]

​@@helyphionnah languages are just too vast to know it all.

[@beautifullyplain22]

The fact that Canon in D was in the background hurts my soul just a little bit more Thanks

[@bl7240]

Instead of making us watch this twice, the first time muted to see if we can pronounce these properly, make another version of this with a brief pause first so we can say it once ourselves, then say it correctly.

[@TheRealFrozenFire]

How many takes, I wonder, did it take Jeaney to get this perfectly correct?

[@ukamikazu]

Yes.

[@bonaaq86]

Why did I think this comment was going to rime?

[@glenn4919]

Because you thought it was worth the time

[@GodsSoldier29]

​@@bonaaq86because you write rhyme like rime.

[@theblah4341]

@@GodsSoldier29 I'd call that a verbal crime

[@snakebitepellehue]

As a native Spanish speaker, the fact that I was able to learn such a phonetically inconsistent language blows my mind. I feel like Ricky Ricardo reading that bedtime story!

[@heirofthenazareen3812]

I love Spanish because it's phonetic. You simply say what you see and chances are you'll be right. Not so in English though!

[@DameOfDiamonds]

​@@heirofthenazareen3812bruh you think English is hard? Try french

[@heirofthenazareen3812]

@@DameOfDiamonds LOL :-) Agreed!! Pronounce the French word "vendent!"

[@Nicomv-eu3pd]

@@heirofthenazareen3812 i feel like if you make a language with words that need different words to describe how they are pronounced, you failed at making a language

[@xylophobiaa]

​@@DameOfDiamondsFrench and English share a lot of words, usually the fancy words in English are from French.

[@gamerzarea9084]

This poem can fill an entire book.

[@SusanBrillon]

Love this teaching. I just came across this video in my feed. I am Christian, and I am now following you. Thank you. 💐🕊🙏

[@57hound]

Never have I felt so lucky to be a native English speaker! I had never given the inconsistencies of English spelling and pronunciation much thought until watching this video-it’s all second nature to me. Huge respect to those who learn English as a second language! I’m struggling with learning Italian, but at least the spelling and pronunciation is logical and consistent-unlike English!

[@nikiTricoteuse]

I hear your pain! I moved to Italy and spent my first few months trying to learn Italian from an English/ ltalian dictionary but, in reality, was mostly just crying about the incomprehensibility of ltalian verbs. In later years l taught ESOL to ltalians so, l had it from both sides. My students agonised over the seeming lack of rules and logic in English too. The spelling and pronunciation of Italian IS logical to a certain extent but the gender of their nouns defies logic as do the indefinite and definite articles! Here's my best tips for learning. Buy and read Italian comics and watch cartoons. The illustrations help to give context, Diabolic was my all time favourite. Also watch movies in ltalian that you've already seen in English. Ditto for books you've read. Knowing the plot in advance helps. I fell in love with the absurdity of ltalo Calvino's writing and while they were a nightmare to read it was worth it and my vocabulary was outstanding. 😊 I used to "read" with a dictionary and a pencil. I'd write the English translation under every word l'd had to look up, then l'd reread the sentence, then the paragraph, then the page, until it all made sense. Hope this helps. Auguri!

[@mewziikal8331]

As a French person, i always pitied English native speakers trying to learn it. Some of its rules are really dumb. As a side note, i did okay on the poem, so i think English isn't that bad. It's very simple and intuitive most of the time, no wonder it's the most universal language.

[@jdlessl]

Because English isn't a language, it's the bastard stepchild of two different language _families_ welded together with no regard whatsoever for consistency, which then went out into the world to pillage vocabulary (and much else besides) from every land the Brits could lay their hands on.

[@aguilarrojasoctavio4402]

@@mewziikal8331Just a note on the last part, it´s not English simplicity and intuitive nature what makes it the most popular lingua franca, but a snowball effects due to political, hence, sociocultural reasons (namely the influence of this emergence from the British Empire). No wonder why Spanish is also one of the most spoken languages

[@daftirishmarej1827]

​@@nikiTricoteuseoh I could be reading my own right of passage from the UK to Italy (then back grazie a COVID) My friend once qualified "Jane, it's MR roof 😂😂😂" IL tetto non LA tetta 😮 Good but confusing times. I once said I hope they weren't farted instead of discouraged! I imagine, you've plenty of similar stories!! Buon ... tutto!

[@zaeroses1096]

As a native English speaker who has lived somewhat equally in 4 different countries, there's definitely a few words there I've never heard of. I have definitely heard of the vast majority, but some of those are really, really obscure.

[@AtomicArtumas]

A decent number of them are from older english, medieval-style terminology, or similar - Basically, completely out of use in the current day, so you either have to be familiar with period works (fantasy stuff covers a lot of them) or read a lot of older literature to be familiar with them. I'd assume that this is probably the ~majority~ of the words people don't generally recognize. That said, there's also definitely a few that are still used that are just not "common" as well. But I think most people should be familiar with most of the words in this amazing poem if they read at least a decent amount of famous literature, such as those commonly required to be read for school.

[@jovetj]

I have an excellent vocabulary and a few words stuck out to me as unfamiliar or very, very obscure. So, you're not alone in thinking that.

[@dexine4723]

@@jovetj Same here. Some I've only seen in very archaic sources.

[@mrdredward129]

Accidental read it as 4 centuries instead of 4 countries, got really confused

[@suwakomoriya5145]

Same. Like wtf is hiccough?

[@FC-uo6dh]

Loved it!

[@chrystal108reading4]

love it love it love it... more please :)

[@King_Dub_Dub]

My old spanish teacher would make us all read this at the beginning of each year, and afterword she'd angrily point at us and say "so don't you whine about Spanish being too complex" and dang she was right.

[@HOMBRERAYA]

Spanish is hard, though. Although just in grammar. Not much on pronunciation

[@King_Dub_Dub]

@@HOMBRERAYA Yeah it was the conjugation and occasional inconsistencies that got me. Not as bad as english but the difference in structure made it hard to get used to.

[@S_W_]

afterward*

[@saudade7842]

At least English doesn't really do grammatical gender (I say as a Latin nerd lol)

[@wintersprite]

And then on top of that is a poem using the wrong spellings intentionally. When you have words like “sea and see” and “there,” “they’re,” and “their”…

[@juannaym8488]

I grew up bilingual with German and Serbian. Every syllable in German has one distinct way to be written, every letter in Serbian makes a certain sound. So, both languages have a very clearly defined way to be written And then I learned English and I always wondered why "school" is written so weird. And why "heard" and "heart" are pronounced differently. And I looked at words like "mediocre" and I was like what the fuck am I looking at

[@SobiTheRobot]

What you're looking at is the bastard child of the Germanic and Romantic languages, which has been put into a blender and shaken with vigor. If an English word looks weird, you can blame the Victorians, and by proxy the French.

[@isaakyhsialf4369]

mediocre is médiokuh i think

[@SobiTheRobot]

@@isaakyhsialf4369 Nope. "Mee-dee-OH-kur"

[@kristenapostol6288]

I laughed way too hard at this, thank you

[@helloimyomommy]

I'm a spaniard, and spanish language is very defined in which ways to use words, write and pronounce stuff (with solid rules with little to no exceptions), so I remember learning english and just giving up on trying to understand how it worked. I just "whatever you say, honey" 'd the language and mimicked it, all while in costant fear of mispronouncing.

[@mamaj6028]

Love this ! ❤❤

[@selfishpick437]

Even as a native English speaker, I haven't heard of many of the words used in the poem, and many other native English speakers watching this video likely have a similar experience. This isn't surprising considering the poem's original version came out in 1922. Several of those words might have been used commonly at some point in time, but have over the years declined in usage. The poet was also likely very well spoken and had more knowledge of the English language than the vast majority of English speakers of his time and today. Trying to pronounce those words correctly is pretty much impossible without prior knowledge as many of them do not follow the "rules" for the language, which of course, is the point of the poem. English is a very messy and chaotic language, that contradicts itself frequently and can make little sense because of that.

[@neeltrip2443]

Yep I didn't know like 5% of the words and I'm a native English speaker

[@object-official]

never heard sward before

[@thesegundovolante]

Literally no one today has the intellect to be able to put together something so poetic and complex

[@neeltrip2443]

@@thesegundovolante ? This is a joke right?

[@lukes.3679]

@@neeltrip2443 Don't feed the troll.

[@millionnaire888]

I'm french and english is my 2nd language. I can't get over how inconsistent english is, it's like every day I'm learning 10 different ways to say the exact same word because everyone pronounces it differently

[@SavageGreywolf]

Yes well it's the fault of the French so

[@tlgx884]

@@SavageGreywolfno, they took our words and what happened after is not our business. French pronunciation is surprisingly consistent. Show a new french word to a french, they’ll always pronounce it the same

[@C4Oc.]

​@@tlgx884Except that English really did take quite some words from French.

[@C4Oc.]

@droverslane4678 Really? I'd like to know, might help me with French class at school

[@jovetj]

Then you got the point of the poem.

[@GrayAndGrey]

I had to pause this video to look for the poem to read it for myself. I loved it. Well.... Imagine my surprise when I finished reading it and restarting this video to see if I got my pronunciation right only to find out this is less than half of the entire poem.

[@BrickfistYT]

This video makes me so unnecessarily anxious for no reason

[@Sayeed1601butmunchesoncurry]

It’s like someone once said, with English… their our know rules

[@weswolever7477]

;)

[@ianthehedgehog9327]

For those of you trying to figure out this comment, the last part should sound like "There are no rules" when said aloud. I'm worried that comments like these annoy some, so I'm sorry if that's the case.

[@mousermind]

@@ianthehedgehog9327 You explained an already unfunny joke, reducing it into the negative.

[@n.d.1259]

@@mousermind Nah mate u're just hating. I'm convinced @ianthehedgehog9327 is genuine and only trying to help. The joke is well.., "corny" but again, I'm very certain it was supposed to come across that way. Think whatever u want champ

[@DavidCruickshank]

Well i thought "their our know rules" was funny 😄

[@B1LLC1PH3R]

This gave 90% of native english speakers a stroke

[@lio1234234]

Surely not?

[@marcocappelli2236]

And 100% of non-native English speakers.

[@Vynthos]

As a native English speaker who is fascinated with the language and its two variants, I audibly whined about a third of the way through

[@scarose]

@@Vynthos What do you mean by two variants?

[@waitwhat3833]

@@scarose maybe american english and britsh english, or current english and olde english?

[@mzmendy]

I loved that! It would probably make a decent test for an English class to read it aloud.

[@vangelina09]

I loved this and found it quite natural to read. Only a couple unfamiliar words. Thanks for the fun mental workout😁

[@ShinjiSixteen]

I immediately knew which poem this would be based on the thumbnail. Thank you for further spreading this delightful piece of written chaos

[@Meveyethin]

I'm fully convinced Jeaney made this just to flex his English pronunciation skills on us

[@Biscotum]

Not to diminish it or anything, but he's playing on easy mode. He's using a shortened version of the poem that omits some of the meaner verses and being an audio-only recording means it'd be really easy to record multiple takes for a given verse or consult a pronunciation reference between verses.

[@bonglobster]

i got so scared and thought this was me for a sec (pfp)

[@Meveyethin]

@@bonglobster HELP LMAO Hsr players unite

[@bonglobster]

@@Meveyethin 🤝 luocha enjoyers unite

[@annmarie3520]

I enjoyed this!!!👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

[@GrullaMustang16]

I wish he would show multiple lines, be silent for a moment so we can pause and try ourselves, then read it. It's kinda hard to see how you really do when you immediately hear the answers as you try to read it yourself.

[@theprior46]

Brilliantly devised. Whoever compiled this was a genius. Makes you think and concentrate at the speed it goes.

[@tessjuel]

The author of the poem was Gerard Nolst Trenité and he was not English, he was Dutch.

[@alangeorgebarstow]

@@tessjuel And the title of Trenité's marvellous poem is "The Chaos".

[@alexeypopov314]

@@tessjuel Thank you! Found it! The guy was genius!

[@tracik1277]

@@tessjuelAny idea when it was written?

[@tessjuel]

@@tracik1277 1922

[@XenosInfinity]

Ah, The Chaos. One of my favourite poems, mostly for its ability to completely break someone who's too confident.

[@BlueIron64]

M’lord ne’er bade me pick up a quill, alas the spelling of feudal “Foeffer” is beyond my ken. 😔

[@brownfamily1892]

This poem is making me wonder why english is the world's lingua franca (?) 😭

[@sentath]

@@brownfamily1892 money

[@lxveuwu417]

​@@BlueIron64You got my ribs 😂😭

[@hayond656]

​@@sentathDafuq?

[@joseanker2059]

Love it. I came to Australia when I was 17 and knew just a little schoolgirl English. It took many years to get spelling and pronunciation correct but I had no problem with this excruciating poem years later. But then I love languages. Speak English, German and French and my native tongue, Dutch.

[@PumpkinGoat-vn4lz]

This made me remember something. In 1dt grade when we were learning active and Passive Voice, we were given an exercise to change the voice of verbs. The question in question (bruh) was "Children make mistakes in the dark". As an answer, I had written: Mistakes in the dark make children ❤️ 💙 💜

[@RailfoxStudios]

I’m a native English speaker. I was a very good English student. Reading comprehension, spelling, punctuation and grammar are all things I’m rather good at. My ability to pronounce words isn’t too bad either. But this… …this made my brain melt. This poem…it frightens me.

[@jacks.6872]

I feel as though I’ve got a pretty extensive vocabulary as an English speaker and I think part of the problem is that there’s a non-negligible number of words that aren’t used in even uncommon English. There’s at least 5-10 words that I’ve never even heard of in this poem.

[@trolloftime5340]

My issue was seeing words I’ve literally never encountered before. Truly chaotic

[@rikimaru1917]

Fr. I'm not a native, but I'm pretty much confident how to pronounce in English words, but this poem is just make me realized that English is just really inconsistent(?)

[@kadmow]

@@jacks.6872 - and some are made up or misspelt.

[@elizabethconyers5179]

Same

[@wintersprite]

Some words have multiple pronunciations, either depending on the area you’re from or context. “Read” can be pronounced the same as reed or as red, depending on if it’s used in present or past tense. “Live” can have a short or long “i” sound. I pronounce “plait” like “plate”. I also pronounce “wont” with a short “o”. “Won’t” with a long “o”.

[@Merip1214]

I'm with you for all but plait/plate. Plaid and plait are both short, ignoring the I. 'plad'

[@r.s.4672]

Exactly! I'm American and it was a British voice reading it, so our pronunciations clashed. Each of us was "right" since U.S. pronunciation is correct here, while British pronunciation is correct for them.

[@KingOfGamesss]

"WONT"...is not an English word

[@wintersprite]

@@Merip1214 Different people use different pronunciations so both versions are probably correct. No different than “gala” having different pronunciations.

[@KingOfGamesss]

...Nice try

[@JCKay]

I could pronounce them all while I watched it on mute! That was fun!!

[@lynnodonnell4764]

LOVE THIS POEM!!!

[@NatoBoram]

Some of these are artefacts of one's accent rather than just being English rules. Actually a great exercise to learn about someone else's accent

[@BryanLu0]

The point is that there are no spelling rules. (Well, there are, but they require you to know the etymology of the word)

[@omargoodman2999]

​@@BryanLu0 More that pronunciation changes outpace spelling changes. Words with silent letters, for examples typically used to be words with pronounced letters until "lazy tongue" won out and the dropped letter got slurred away. But it gets preserved and petrified by writing, literally carved into stone at first, and written the same for ages after the spoken form diverges countless times. It's often only when some group explicitly and deliberately makes an effort to consolidate and normalize spelling that silent letters may go away... for a time. But language always changes. The slang people speak today isn't even the same as what they were speaking 5 years ago, and *definitely* not what they were using 10 years ago, and 20 years ago, and 30 years ago. And in another 2 years or so, we're all going to have to learn brand new weird terms. Yeet will get yeeted and there will be some brand new term to mean "to wildly throw away with great force, whether literally or metaphorically"; I dunno, maybe "scomf" or something like that. Everyone will "scomf" stuff all over the place for a couple of years... then it will get replaced with yet something new.

[@BryanLu0]

@@omargoodman2999 Other languages have much better correspondence between spelling and speaking, e.g. Spanish has highly regular spelling

[@omargoodman2999]

@@BryanLu0 That's because, just as I said, explicit steps were taken to standardize it on a national level, starting with the efforts of King Alfonso X of Castile in the 13th Century, and later Queen Isabella in the late 15th-early 16th Centuries. Then the Spanish Royal Academy in 1713 was primarily given the task of standardizing the language. So, for a long time, Spanish standardization had been a unified effort at the highest levels of government. By contrast, English standardization had always been the efforts of a single individual that may be picked up for a short while and some changes may be made, but then those changes would be dropped either in whole or, worse, in part. When standardization is part-way rolled back, you end up with even greater divergence than before. For example, an attempted English standardized system was liked by Theodore Roosevelt and he ordered government offices to start using it in August of 1906. It only lasted until December of the _same year_ before Congress passed a resolution to restore the old spellings. But, by then, *some* changes became commonly accepted like anaemia->anemia and mould->mold. But others like mixed->mixt and scythe->sithe didn't end up getting taken up by the public in common use. Compare the _relative_ consistency of Spanish (it still has issues like silent initial "h" and such) to a language like French, _also_ a Romance language, but with spelling craziness out the bird... I mean the _oiseau..._ I mean the wazoo. And don't get me started on Japanese... or lion eating poets.

[@saudade7842]

@@omargoodman2999 Yeah, and there was also that trend of changing pronunciations to seem more French because that was seen as the 'classy' way to spell

[@justsomejerseydevilwithint4606]

I feel like if I ever taught English, this would be my final exam.

[@chronic5577]

Evil.

[@y2ksw1]

Nice. I didn't know a few words and was thrown over by the pronunciation of some 😊

[@Odala_GachaProductions]

I aspire to be antagonistic with my words in my encyclical yet abhorrent manner of poetry; this just awes my mind to where I swell in the moment of horror that spites me with dread. Great poem. Just a heads up, my poetry is vey critical for the simple reason of being cryptic and chaotic at the same time. Hopefully one day my nature of poetry will be acknowledged for being absurdly complex for the deep individual and indigestible descriptions that I put into slick sentences. Good luck understanding them. I will give a small gig of one, just to give an example: “Then, lost wind blows in my way; Come to me. I ask to stay. Wish that I could retire from this remote remaining life in my reckoning, reckless pursuit- Wish I could somber and sleep, a little more rest for my dreams soon to die. Gone with the wind, drifting on the cold waves. Gone with the time, nothing I’d love to say. Here’s to what I throw in trine. Here’s to my words crossed. A timeless divine. Come to me, wind. I beg unto thee. Come to my heart. Let it open for me to see! Unto, thee.” Here you guys go ^^

[@dougmichalak5687]

There were a few words pronounced and/or spelled differently in various English accents and dialects, of course; but what a fantastic poem! They should teach this in every ESL course...

[@134f1n47r33]

Yeah, I was surprised to find that victuals is apparently actually pronounced vittles like the Southern bastardization (or not so) and grew up spelling hiccough "hiccup" though I now know through that spelling where the word came from (a cough with a hic)

[@YoongisChillPiano]

Yeah, I noticed they spelled it mould and Americans spell it mold

[@MMMaple]

I was almost surprised by aye being pronounced like “eye” cause here I’ve heard it pronounced like “hay”

[@Cole_Is_A_Mole]

@@YoongisChillPianoWell that could be different like putting something in a mould to form a new shape!

[@cm8104]

@@lastgiddon aye, they do!

[@Aliryal]

I'm not a native English speaker (I'm from the Philippines), yet I managed to pronounce nearly half of the words in this poem. The rest just gave me a stroke.

[@veryepikhuman3958]

our language makes no sense to the best of us, it is okay :)

[@SofaKingShit]

Don't worry because should you ever meet an English speaking tourist and you can't quite seem to grasp what it is they are trying to say to you they will usually shout the words louder and louder at you until one of you simply gives up and walks away. Btw l was sitting around with some Porto Gallera fishermen a couple of decades ago and they apologized to me and my yank friend whenever they started talked fishing with each other and slipped inadvertently into Tagalog without meaning to. Made me and my American friend feel like the unsociable arrogant barbarians that we are because we had to both recognize that we probably weren't emotionally sophisticated enough to have the sensibilities to do the same if the situation was reversed and it was a Phillipino that was sitting around with a bunch of Euro-trash or Yanks. Anyway cheers.

[@Erika-yy8ry]

Oh yes, this is helping me a lot to understand.

[@vivienhodgson3299]

I didn't expect a tongue twister! I have no problem with the pronunciation, but it scrolled too quickly to keep up with it!

[@axelprino]

As a non-native speaker of English there were at least a couple dozen words there that I had never encountered before, and apparently I was also very much wrong in how I thought some were pronounced. Over the years I've learned that it's easier to treat the spelling of English words as a primary key for a database that also happens to have the correct pronunciation in another field rather than a representation of the sounds one's mouth is supposed to make.

[@jameskowanko7574]

Many of those words in that poem are really old Shakespearian words, that even I, as a native English speaker with a large vocabulary have never heard or read before

[@wieldylattice3015]

The prom is 101 years old and some of the words aren’t used commonly anymore, don’t sweat it edit: *poem I had managed to block the fact that the prom is tomorrow out of my mind edit 2: okay am I whooshing people or am I being woodshed by people who also know the joke

[@walkermenkus104]

Slight problem though, primary keys are unique and spellings... unfortunately aren't ☠️

[@axelprino]

@@walkermenkus104 I didn't say it was a perfect approach :P

[@nathangamble125]

@@wieldylattice3015 Have fun at the prom.

[@AliceHerbring]

I'm swedish, and I just "graduated" 9th grade. My english teacher handed this out to the class a few months ago and had us read it aloud. Yep, pure agony.

[@balls_gaming]

bro we just found satan right here

[@SunflowerJunnie]

Um, im in 9th right now. Is it weird i know most of these words and how to pronounce them correctly?

[@AliceHerbring]

No of course not, it just depends on how dedicated you are and how often you speak english :)@@SunflowerJunnie

[@SunflowerJunnie]

@@AliceHerbring thank you so much for reassuring me! If it were my classmates they'd definitely go, "you're an alien aren't you?"

[@SunflowerJunnie]

@@AliceHerbring also, English is actually my third language even though I learned it at the same time as my first and second. My country is not an English communicating country.

[@AliOssol]

It's the fact that Cannon is bring played in the background that make this twice as painful for me. Both as a classical musician and as a frenchman I can confirm this is hell

[@J-i-y-aa]

Yes. Another way to lift my non existent self esteem.

[@BrooklyKnight]

The hard part about this poem is that it changes up so much depending on which variety of English you speak, which mergers and splits exist in your speech (i.e. cot-caught merger, trap-bath split), and other minute details.

[@nemesi55]

Yeah, there are a few of these that just don’t work in American English, at least a good chunk of regional dialects. I’ve never known anyone who pronounces “sieve” as rhyming with “live” (it would rhyme with “grieve instead). Also, some of these depending on your dialect don’t rhyme-Some Americans would rhyme “aunt” with “grant”, but I tend to say “aunt” in a way that would rhyme with “haunt”. So the pronunciations don’t match up. (But sometimes I say “aunt” with the “grant” sound. Usually when talking about a specific aunt, as opposed to “haunt”-rhyming aunt which is more for the general concept of an aunt? Keeps you on your toes.)

[@k.c1126]

​@@nemesi55o

[@boomergames8094]

@@nemesi55 Live or Live? :)

[@Karadoxical]

@@nemesi55Just chiming in from the northeastern US to say that I (and everyone I know who grew up in my area) pronounce "sieve" to rhyme with "live" (or give).

[@kelseysmith3905]

@@Karadoxical I grew up in southeastern US and also pronounced sieve as “siv” (rhymes with give)

[@Raesling1]

Since English is my first language and I grew up with a love of reading, I can't be super proud that I could properly read 90% of the words correctly. Since the point of the poem is to point out our weird pronunciation rules (or lack thereof), I'm not particularly embarrassed that I've never heard some of the other words such as Melpomene. Still, the poem makes its point.

[@krinkrin5982]

That one is a rather obscure name, so it would be tricky to hear it in regular life.

[@peterbutterjam97]

I got everything but Terpsichore because what the entire hell 😂😂😂 I did get Melpomene because of The Expanse audiobooks because of Clarissa Mao

[@madalyntrezise2406]

Yeah that’s me as well I have always adored reading

[@chevand8]

The thing is, while the point of the poem is pointing out that English pronunciation and spelling are often at odds with each other in ways that other languages avoid... using the names Melpomene and Terpsichore feels a bit cheap, because they're not native English names, they're anglicized renderings of _Greek_ names. However, I _would_ also say that gets to the core of one of the features of English that is probably most responsible for the inconsistent pronunciations, which is that English is uniquely equipped for appropriating foreign loanwords. Any language that snatches up words from Spanish, French, German, Arabic, Sanskrit, Japanese, Nahuatl and Hawaiian and makes them its own is going to have some spelling inconsistencies. But it's also one of the features that has led to it being so vibrant and widely spoken, too, so it's a bit of a trade-off.

[@forgottenetremembered]

@@peterbutterjam97 Terpsichore is one of the Nine Muses, daughters of the sky god Zeus and Titan of Memory, Mnemosyne.

[@luciellawliet]

Today I learned that my English is much better than I thought it was. That’s one of the only things I’ve got going for me

[@penneyburgess5431]

Whoever wrote this is brilliant.

[@da4127]

My native language is Spanish, and never understood why on these American movies, there were so many spelling bee contests, I thought surely some words are tricky but it can’t be that hard to spell most words, then I started learning English pronunciation and I understood why, English is a lot of the times written in a way that is not consistent with how it’s spoken, I started to appreciate how simple Spanish really is on that sense, sure some C’s sound like S’s and sometimes Z’s, there is a silent H every now and then, the K might sound like Q or C, and some G’s sound like J’s, but that’s it, you learn a few spelling tricks and you are settled for life, you just heard a word and now how to spell it, English is a mess, to the point that most people I know, when they ask you how some English or French word is spelled, you can easily tell them by saying the word as if you were reading it in Spanish, no need to spell every letter, the spoken word is enough to explain how its spelled

[@2ms2]

Spanish rules are a pain in the ass, but at least they exist. English is pure chaos, you just have to learn everything from memory, I hate it.

[@pansepot1490]

Italian is the same. Same as Spanish I mean, not English. We have a word for spelling, but I bet if you ask 1000 Italians only few know it so rarely it is used.

[@SurfTheSkyline]

I have been studying Spanish in my free time for a little over a year now and in talking with my friend who convinced me to give it a go I have brought up how it basically feels to me like learning it you just need to choose how to deal with C/S/Z, LL/Y and B/V based on where and with whom you will speaking then stick to the choices and how other than that and the occasional X that may do funky stuff Spanish phonetics feel quite simple considering the rules tend to be quite consistent. Not to mention the vowels actually tend to behave themselves elimiating guess work English has from fitting way too many sounds onto not enough letters plus there is even Ü for the edge cases like Pingüino to keep things easy. It is very pleasant to learn in contrast to how awful I'd imagine English must be based on when I read some of the more "out there" town names from the UK for the first time and then feel like I am having a stroke when I see how to pronounce them correctly.

[@godqueensadie]

English doesn't have many rules, and that makes it very easy to learn and understand at a conversational level, but it makes it absurdly difficult to "master", and allows for a lot of insane but very unrealistic things like this poem, or the "Buffalo x8" sentence to exist. The benefit of how English is designed is that English speakers, regardless of language mastery, regional dialects, Native or Non-Native can very easily converse with each other after learning only a small amount of words, and even if you use the wrong versions of words it's easy to understand what someone meant.

[@shamooth8071]

​@@godqueensadiethe last bit of what you said is so completely true, english although basically impossible to master, is easy to understand when wrong words or grammar is used, or even completely different pronunciations of a word is used, that's how people particularly in America still understand each other despite heavy regional accents/pronunciations

[@favoritemediafixed]

I taught English as a second language, and I suddenly have a new found respect for what they go through trying to understand how we see all these words as the same and yet so different. It seems so natural to us, but it makes absolutely no sense to people who don't come from here

[@Luigimaestro]

Bro 99% of all native American speakers have no idea what this poem is saying

[@ruthlewis6678]

When I meet someone who is learning to speak English I am inclined to give them a hug and a trophy just for trying. Crazy. Oft times you have to know the meaning of a specific word before you can figure out the pronunciation.

[@fernandaabreu5625]

Sorry but it seems natural to any fluent speaker, no need to be native. A lot of non-natives would not struggle reading this.

[@brchh]

The poem itself is just giving many, many examples of words that look alike and look like they should sound alike, but when you read them they are completely different

[@AndreiBerezin]

We'll never forgive until you legally change the spelling to enuf, coff, ruf, thru, tho and thoro.

[@DuckyDoesSmth9517]

Those were the longest 5 minutes and 25 seconds of english I've ever experienced. Thank you. - sincerely, a Brazilian

[@cadendicky1855]

I unironically enjoyed this poem quite a bit.

[@laszlosomogyi932]

there is a poem like this but with the quirks of the Hungarian language it's called "édes ékes apa nyelvünk" (the title is a joke in it self because native language can be referred to as mother language but in Hungarian the word anya (mother) sounds realy close to the word apa (father) )

[@mousermind]

*itself