Why brake?

[mklotz]

You guys over there are just sooooo yesterday

This from a guy who lives in a country where they still spell 'jail' with a 'g'!

[ths]

There's no 'g' in prison.

[tel]

Take no notice of 'im Hugh - they can't get their heads around 'plough' either! 

[Maryak]

Yea quirky mob

Sulfur OK

Fotograph NBG

Bob

[ths]

I shall approach the world with a pinch of salt.

[mklotz]

Take no notice of 'im Hugh - they can't get their heads around 'plough' either! 

Rhymes with 'tough' and 'rough', right?

[tangler]

Take no notice of 'im Hugh - they can't get their heads around 'plough' either! 

Rhymes with 'tough' and 'rough', right?

No, no  - cough, obviously     

[mklotz]

               ENGLISH IS TOUGH STUFF!

          Dearest Creature in Creation,
          Study English pronunciation
          I will teach 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 you will Tear,
          Stamp your feet and pull your Hair.

          Just compare Heart, Beard, and Heard,
          Dies and Diet, Lord and Word,
          Sword and Sward, Retain and Britain.
          (Mind the latter and how tis written).
          Now, I surely will not plague you
          With such words as Plague and Argue;
          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 in 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, go Forward, to Reward.
          Your pronunciation is OK,
          When you correctly say Croquet,
          Rounded, Wounded, Grieve and Sieve,
          Friend and Fiend, Alive and Live.
          Ivy and Privy cause a Famous Clamour,
          - which, like enamour, rhymes 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 Fouls, Haunt but Aunt,
          Front, Font, Wont, Want, Grand and Grant,
          Shoes, Goes, Does. Now first say Finger,
          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 rhyme with Bury.
          Post, Lost, Dost 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,
          But Heifer does and also Zephyr.
          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 and Vowed.
          Mark the differences, Moreover,
          Between Mover, Cover and Clover.
          Leeches, Breeches, Wise and Precise,
          Chalice, but Police and Lice.
          Camel, Constable, Unstable,
          Principle, Disciple, Label,
          Petal, Panel and Canal;
          Wait, Surprise, Plait, Promise and Pal.

          Worm and Storm, Chaise, Chaos, Chair,
          Senator, Spectator, Mayor,
          Tour but Our, Succour and Four.
          Gas, Alas but Arkansas.
          Sea, Idea, Korea, Area,
          Psalm, Maria but Malaria.
          Youth, South, Southern, Cleanse and Clean.
          Doctrine, Turpentine and Marine.
          Compare Alien with Italian,
          Dandelion and Battalion;
          Sally with Alley, Yea and Ye,
          Eye, I, Ay, Aye, Whey and Key.

          Say Aver but Ever and Fever
          Neither, Leisure, Skein, Deceiver,
          Heron, Granary, Canary,
          Crevice and Device and Aerie.
          Face but Preface and then Efface.
          Phlegm, Phlegmatic, Ass, Glass but 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 with There.
          Seven is right but so is Even.
          Hyphen, Roughen, Nephew and Stephen,
          Monkey, Donkey, Turk and Jerk.
          Ask, Grasp, Wasp, and Cork and Work.

          Won't it make you lose your wits!
          Writing Groats but saying Grits.
          It's a dark abyss or tunnel,
          Strewn with Stones, Stowed Solace and 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 .............. give it up!

          AUTHOR UNKNOWN

[tel]

Nice on Marv! 

[mklotz]

For a real test of your command of language, try reading it aloud. 

[tangler]

I like it.  Where do you find this stuff?

Rod

[mklotz]

I like it.  Where do you find this stuff?

The same place I find stuff like this...

                            The I Before E Quaqmire

The apparent perversity of English spelling is occasionally tamed by a simple
rule. For example, I remember learning the famous poem:
     I before E,
     Except after C.

It didn't take too long for this rule to run into trouble, and I next had to
learn the "revised" version:
     I before E,
     Except after C,
     Or when sounded like A,
     As in "neighbor" and "weigh".

But just when we fancied that spelling had become a science, a prescient
foreign geisha woman named Deirdre Oppenheimer came down from the heights of a
glacier, tore off her veil, seized an ancient financier, and shamed our
consciences grievously. "This society is inefficient!", she inveighed. "I
wasted my leisure becoming proficient in cuneiform hieroglyphs. Either
reimburse me with the value of the Einstein coefficient, or I will drag this
man back to my hacienda in Muncie, wherein he will forfeit his life!"

I feigned interest, but looked for our feisty concierge Neil, whom I might
inveigle into reining in this weird being. But he had gone to Anaheim, Beijing,
Madeira and Taipei with Alexei to shop for a beige geiger counter. His
absenteeism made me feel like queueing for the exit. The only sound was the
neighing of the sheik's eight reindeer, chewing their edelweiss.

I turned to Sheila, the Budweiser heiress. "Cease your surveillance of the
sleigh and its freight! We must stop the reign of this plebeian atheist!" I
must have hit a vein, because she deigned to put down her counterfeit
kaleidoscope proficiently, albeit only to point out a weird Klein bottle full
of nucleic proteins. "Therein is the skein of meiosis," she said, "the
leitmotif of our species, of seismic importance to our homogeneity. It would
surfeit a meistersinger, a sovereign, or even an omniscient deity like
Poseidon."

Decreeing my obeisance, I offered the paperweight, a Meisterbrau stein, and a
Holstein heifer to the heister. Agreeing that it was sufficient, she reinstated
the old wisenheimer, fleeing with spontaneity via Boeing to Beirut.

CIE words:

        agencies
        ancient
        coefficient
        concierge
        conscience
        deficient
        efficient
        fancied
        financier
        glacier
        hacienda
        Lucie
        Marcie
        mercies
        Muncie
        omniscient
        policies
        prescient
        proficient
        science
        society
        species
        sufficient
        tenancies

EI words:

        absenteeism
        ageism
        albeit
        Alexei
        Alzheimer
        Anaheim
        atheist
        beige
        being
        Beijing
        Beirut
        Boeing
        Budweiser
        caffeine
        codeine
        counterfeit
        cuneiform
        deign
        Deirdre
        edelweiss
        eider
        eight
        Einstein
        either
        Fahrenheit
        feign
        feint
        feisty
        foreign
        forfeit
        freight
        geiger counter
        geisha
        heifer
        height
        heinous
        heir
        heist
        herein
        Holstein
        homogeneity
        Hygeia
        inveigh
        inveigle
        kaleidoscope
        Keith
        Klein
        Leicester
        leishmaniasis
        leisure
        leitmotif
        Madeira
        meiosis
        monteith
        neigh
        Neil
        neither
        nonpareil
        nuclei
        nucleic
        obeisance
        onomatopoeic
        Oppenheimer
        plebeian
        Pleiades
        poltergeist
        protein
        queueing
        reimburse
        rein
        reindeer
        reinstate
        reinvent
        reitbok
        seismic
        seize
        sheik
        Sheila
        skein
        sleigh
        sovereign
        surfeit
        surveillance
        Taipei
        their
        theism
        veil
        vein
        weigh
        weir
        weird
        wisenheimer
        zein
        zeitgeist


[tel]

Now you're getting the hang of it Marv. Y'awl will be walking upright before long! (Well, except Eric, perhaps)

[ths]

That's great Marv.

[cidrontmg]

Heh. Everything else is +/- understandable, except Melpomene. Wikipedia was helpful, but I'm not sure if I really need that expression for another 67 years. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melpomene