English Language Logic

Further to the last post (da, daaah, da da daah...) about the problems some non-Brits have with our language, a Greek once told me when I told her that Greek was a difficult language to learn, that English was much more difficult. The following will perhaps explain what she meant...

I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you
on hiccough, thorough, laugh and through!

Well done and now you wish perhaps
to learn of less familiar traps?
Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard but sounds like bird.

And dead: it's said like bed, not bead -
For goodness sake don't call it 'deed'!
Watch out for meat and great and threat,
They rhyme with suite and straight and debt.

And cork and work and card and ward
And font and front and word and sword
And do and go and thwart and cart -
Come now, I've hardly made a start!

A dreadful language? Man alive!
I'd mastered it when I was five!!