A Spelling Tongue Twister of Sorts

While packing up my stuff to move it to our-next-year-house (ohmygosh, wedding is less than three weeks away now!), I came across a newspaper clipping my grandfather gave me. It says "author unknown", but it's possible one could find the author by Googling (or at least follow a trail of references...). There are plenty of similar poems out there. I think they're all quite clever :-)

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Ah, the perils of the English language! Reader Eric Hodgson sends in this piece titled "Spelling Traps" (author unknown). Speaking English is as complicated and hazardous as negotiating Durban traffic.

I take it you already know of tough and bough and cough and dough.
Others may stumble, but not you,
on hiccough, thorough, slough 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 and 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.)
A moth is not a moth in mother; nor both in bother, nor broth in brother.
And here is not a match for there, nor dear and fear for bear and pear.
And then there's dose and rose and lose -
just look them up - and goose and choose.
And cork and work and card and ward,
and font and front and word and sword.
And do and go, then thwart and cart.
Come, come, I've hardly made a start.
A dreadful language? Why man alive,
I learned to talk it when I was five.

The Absurdity of the English Language

Phoney Phonetics

One reason why I cannot spell,
Although I learned the rules quite well
Is that some words like coup and through
Sound just like threw and flue and Who;
When oo is never spelled the same,
The duice becomes a guessing game;
And then I ponder over though,
Is it spelled so, or throw, or beau,
And bough is never bow, it's bow,
I mean the bow that sounds like plow,
And not the bow that sounds like row -
The row that is pronounced like roe.
I wonder, too, why rough and tough,
That sound the same as gruff and muff,
Are spelled like bough and though, for they
Are both pronounced a different way.
And why can't I spell trough and cough
The same as I do scoff and golf?
Why isn't drought spelled just like route,
or doubt or pout or sauerkraut?
When words all sound so much the same
To change the spelling seems a shame.
There is no sense - see sound like cents -
in making such a difference
Between the sight and sound of words;
Each spelling rule that undergirds
The way a word should look will fail
And often prove to no avail
Because exceptions will negate
The truth of what the rule may state;
So though I try, I still despair
And moan and mutter "It's not fair
That I'm held up to ridicule
And made to look like such a fool
When it's the spelling that's at fault.
Let's call this nonsense to a halt."

Attributed to Vivian Buchan, NEA Journal 1966/67, USA,
published in Spelling Progress Bulletin Spring 1966 pdf, p6, Reprinted from Educational Horizons.

Found at The Spelling Society