Pronounce These Words and See How Good You Are

Read this poem by B. Shaw. And if you can correctly pronounce every word in this poem, you will be speaking English is better than 90% of the native English speakers in the world. After trying the verses, a Frenchman said he’d prefer six months of hard labour to read six lines aloud. Try them yourself.

c'est la fin

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.
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, 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, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation’s OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme 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 foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And 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 sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post 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.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
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, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.
Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.
Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, 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 ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.
Pronunciation (think of Psyche!)
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won’t it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It’s a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, 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 to give up!!!

- B. Shaw

When I am Falling Down

Of recent, I have had a bad time, and I realized it is partly because of it that there is nobody and nothing in this world other than to have hurt. I knocked on every door to see the open field of human kindness and goodness. But there isn’t anyone for sure. Will you, my dear, also close the door for me? I ask you.

When I am falling down

You are the only one

Who will lift me up?

When others hurt me

You are the only hope

Who will cheer me?

Don’t make me down

Just because others are doing so

Don’t hurt me

Discard me like a scrap

Don’t make me nothing

Don’t throw me like that

like a thing

When everyone mars me

You are the hope I live

You too

When I am down

There is nobody for me

Stand by my side

Consoling me

Don’t admonish me

Like that

I have a human heart

When I am in no use

Don’t say useless

Don’t say, “You are an unwanted”

When everyone ignores me

Don’t ignore me

I have nobody

Than you

It’s only you

And you will be

The one to care me

Who will?

You are the savior to me

If you fall

I will lift you

And take you to the safe place.

Old Out, New In: New Year Resolutions

From google

Will 2013 Be A Snaky Year?

 

Every New Year, people tend to make some New Year resolutions, which may not be followed always. Yesterday evening, I was thinking of mine… what could be some of my New Year resolutions, ...despite a lot of ponderings, I couldn’t get as concrete as such. There are many but the moment I think about the year 2013, the year of a female snakes, I almost forget my resolutions. The snake is one of the most dreadful animals I have ever seen. I simply dislike the sound of it. I cannot imagine myself reborn as a snake, if so, I would faint, and die looking at my body.

I am kind of jumper, I look at a nice flat rock to land smoothly, and everyone is in fact. I cannot stick to New Year resolutions. Sometimes promises and pledges fail miserably and utterly. Anyways, it is good to take as a kind of frontage or reminder for the year. Below are some of my resolutions:

1)      I will try to be honest and be a kind of well-bred brat like before. No, honestly, I have all these good words in my mind this year; polite, respectful, modest, courteous, refine, decent, cordial, affable, etc. I hope to implement some of these in my ways of life in a better approach. I will try this year not to tell a single lie to anyone. The previous year was a mixture of a few liars because of the situation. I will try to be true to myself, no matter when the world falls apart. But I don’t know where this snake year will drag me. May it not be a snaky year? I pray.

2)      I will try to be an understanding person. If you fail or if I fail, I will understand it, not a big deal. The greater part of life is made because of understanding each other. Understanding doesn’t mean enlightenment of sorts here. It is the way to think about others’ problems, situations, etc, and acting on them. I pledge to my family that I will become more generous and considerate this year( if they pledge to do so to me) and my children, I will understand, even if you pass the shit on my forehead, I will understand. And hope they wouldn’t mind too if I do the same!

3)      I will try to forget this contentious concept of every action has its own reaction. This has brought me so many sicknesses to me and others at the same time. Tit for tat, going against, becoming unruly, etc have to be minimized this year. I will mind my own business (eat my own share, not others). More patience is what I will become, but truly I am impatient of this snake year. I think something will happen to me; is it good, or bad. Something. I pray.

4)      I will try to cultivate more love for my family, parents, children, and others. What makes the world to moves around; is it a gravitational force or is it money? Certainly, they are not, as far as my understanding of life recently. It is love that makes the world move around. And the hatred stops the world completely. I will resole the wheels of life with better outlooks. I will fire my gun hard so that everyone can hear the messages of love. So, goodness is in the air, but I fear if love is only one-sided. One-sided love is always madness and I wonder I may not become mad this year with love.

5)      I will hook near the warm fireside like a cat in the home. Enough is enough-this is what the protest banner reads in one of the demonstrations in India about a raped girl.  The girl was terribly raped in Delhi, inserted an iron rod, and thrown naked on the road by those evil bus passengers/goondas. And a few days ago, two Bhutanese women were molested by the bus conductor and the driver in Bangalore. A piece of very sad news, and it's not a safe place to be in India. This is not a good thing to talk about this New Year. It’s time to enjoy, but I am terribly affected by this brutal incident; it was a very bad ending of the year 2012. And if ever, I will fight to the last fight with those goondas, well, good all people have come out to demonstrate for this. For now, I feel, a home is a secure place. I’m scared my two little eggs-like balls would also get smashed by those evils minded people for no reason. So enough of traveling and being away from home. Home is where the heart is. Oh my dear, hope you won’t mind and wouldn’t get bore for I will be in hibernation for a long time. 

6)      And the last but not the least, the big resolution is….let me leave this (This detesting snake may never let me fulfill whatever I have in my mind) I am afraid this big dream will bury my whole life. It’s the life's task, not a day, a week, a month, a year; it’s the lifetime achievement—and the lifetime achievement of writing nonsense goes to Mr. New Year. I say New Year is no new year. It’s old. For every New Year, my age becomes older and older. The antitheses of old are new, and old was once new, and the new will become old. A moment comes and goes. The moment is always in a movement. Xmas has just become ex now. The year comes and goes; 2012, 2013, 2014…etc but one’s life cannot go and come. It goes forever. I don’t know where? But our bodies become worthless as ash. Sad indeed.

For now, happy indeed to celebrate the New Year. So, everyone, have a profuse year ahead.

Derrida and I

Jacques Derrida -I like this man. He says something like this: there is nothing meaningful as such. There is no logos, no center, no origin, no presence, no absence, no beginning, no end…etc.  Things exist in buoyant. The word ‘love’ is not loved. It doesn’t signify anything. It can mean hate, kill, dark, murder, etc. And the word ‘hate’ would mean love, just like Gandhiji treated hate as love. There is no meaning as such. Everyone can deconstruct it. Freeplay is what I like. This inquisitive Derrida says, “The center is not the center.” Then, where is the center? It is beyond, what he termed as “transcendental signified.” Who knows, if nothing lies beyond the hills. But there lies. This seemingly crazy French man was asked this question in one of his philosophical discourses, “Where does the authority lie?” and the answer he gave was a toddler’s answer, “The authority always lies.” Every talking baby could have answered it in that way. It’s like asking him, “Where do the baggy testicles lie?” and you wouldn’t surprise yourself to get an answer, “It always lies there.” Not on your head, not on your cheeks, and you wouldn’t like it if it lies there somewhere. So it always lies there. Warm and fit.

But Derrida's metaphysical philosophy of absence and presence is not his philosophy. And funnily he accepts it as created by himself. It is there and it is not there. Everything is nothing. Nothing is everything. I bluntly argue with Derrida and say that he has taken it from my father. My father’s philosophy of no logos, no eminent presence is the same. The concept of no meaning, transcendental, etc was there already. My father’s religious canons taught me, and my father got it from his father, my grandfather, and my grandfather got it from my great grandparents, and so it moves back to the time immemorial, and no fella knows it exactly. If one has to know, then one has to get back to the origin of the world. There is no question of going backward now when we are living forward. I would pass the same information of ‘the center is not the center,’ without understanding much to my son and he would do too to his son.

I like Derrida’s free play, and I like free playing with words. Last time, I played with a girl after I read Derrida’s "Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences." “Big Boobs,” is what I said when she was crouching under the chair. She free-played the meaning and she didn’t talk with me for two days for just these two words. That almost killed me. Women always do chemical analysis on what they hear. If you say, beautiful to them, they would think about ugly. If you say my god, they would think they are goats. They are stupidly sensitive. They are the real Derridas. That is why; I talk very less with women. They would misunderstand and disrupt every golden droplet of the word and treat it as an ironic word.  

Derrida's deconstructions lead me to many problems. A few days ago, I told an auto driver that the right is left and the left is right. “So where shall we go, to the center,” the driver said. “No, there is no center. There is no right, no left man,” I joked with him. The auto driver curiously said, “Are you kind of in sense?”  “No, I’m saying, if there is no right, there is no left.”  That auto driver was blunt-headed; he shook his head quite puzzled. “Even I am puzzled,” I said to him at last. “Let’s live simple; let’s say it is right, there is left, why to break your head without any meaning,” the good driver said. “If you find the meaning, there is no meaning in it,” I said. The good driver laughed and said, “What's that again? I think you need some medications very soon.” Hearing his remarks, I sort of chilled feelings ran inside my heart; I lowered my head and ran towards my room cursing Derrida. I was kind of aporia, unable to decide whether I was really mad or sane. I realized after two days of thinking that there was no reality in everything, it was just construction. That auto driver wouldn’t in any way say, whether I was sane or insane. Because of the free play of meaning, I taught him on our brief encounter.