Date: Mon, 2 Dec 91 09:44:32 -0500
From: walsh@ibis.cs.umass.edu
Subject: Monday Morning Coffee!

Good Morning!

It's coffee time!  Or, at least it will be shortly.  See everyone at
roughly 10-ish for the usual.
                                                      norm

Tom Kalt submitted this a few weeks ago and (things being what they were)
I haven't had a chance to use it 'till now.  This is a bit of net-folklore 
that has drifted around for some time.  Hopefully it's new to most.  I've
only included the first few paragraphs because it's quite long and I don't
want to clog things up this early on a Monday morning with a huge broadcast
message.  If you'd like the rest of it, just drop me a note.

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ENGLISH IS TOUGH STUFF

(Multi-national personnel at North Atlantic Treaty Organization
headquarters near Paris found English to be an easy language ...
until they tried to pronounce it.  To help them discard an array
of accents, the verses below were devised.  After trying them, a
Frenchman said he'd prefer six months at hard labor to reading
six lines aloud.  Try them yourself.)

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.

.
.
.

Finally, which rhymes with enough --
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!