Go Ghoti!

Ghoti = fish

You know the old saw about how ghoti can be pronounced fish? Say the "gh" as in rough or laugh, "o" as in women, "ti" as in nation or potion. Supposed to show what an insanely confusing language English can be to learn.

I came across this great poem today called "The Chaos", which apparently has been floating around the web for some time now. The poem is not attributed, but I saw it at Rachel Lucas's blog.

I have since found it in numerous other places, sometimes with this appended:

English is tough stuff.

While most of you non-native speakers of English speak English quite well, there is always room for improvement (of course, the same could be said for every person for any subject, but that is another matter). To that end, I'd like to offer you a poem. Once you've learned to correctly pronounce every word in this poem, you will be speaking English better than 90% of the native English speakers in the world.

If you find it tough going, do not despair, you are not alone: 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.