This made me a little happy and reading out loud was certainly entertaining. Good luck.

The chaos

A poem on English pronunciation

Charivarius, (G.N. Trenite: 1870–1946).

Dearest creature in creation,
Studying English pronunciation,
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse.
It will keep you, Susy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy;
Tear in eye your dress you’ll tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer:
Pray console your loving poet,
Make my coat look new, dear, sew it.
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).
Made has not the sound of bade,
Say–said, pay–paid, laid, but plaid.
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as vague and ague,
But be careful how you speak:
Say break, steak, but bleak and streak,
Previous, precious; fuschia, via;
Pipe, shipe, recipe and choir;
Cloven, oven; how and low;
Script, receipt; shoe, poem, toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery;
Daughter, laughter and Terpsichore;
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles;
Exiles, similes, reviles;
Wholly, holly; signal, signing;
Thames, examining, combining;
Scholar, vicar and cigar,
Solar, mica, war, and far.
Desire–desirable, admirable–admire;
Lumber, plumber; bier but brier;
Chatham, brougham; renown but known,
Knowledge; done, but gone and tone,
One, anemone; Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen; laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German; wind and mind;
Scene, Melpomene, mankind;
Tortoise, turquoise, chamois-leather.
This phonetic labyrinth
Gives moss, gross; brook, brooch; ninth, plinth.
Billet does not end like ballet;
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet;
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Banquet is not nearly parquet,
Which is said to rime with darky.
Viscous, viscount; load and broad;
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation’s O.K.
When you say correctly; croquet;
Rounded, wounded; grieve and sieve;
Friend and fiend, alive and live,
Liberty, library; heave and heaven;
Rachel, ache, moustache; eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed;
People, leopard; towed, but vowed.
Mark the difference moreover
Between mover, plover, Dover;
Leeches, breeches; wise, precise;
Chalice, but police and lice.
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, discipline, label;
Petal, penal and canal;
Wait, surmise, plait, promise; pal.
Suit, suite, ruin; circuit, conduit,
Rime with: “shirk it” and “beyond it”;
But it is not hard to tell
Why it’s pall, mall, but PallMall.
Muscle, muscular; goal and iron;
Timber, climber; bullion and lion;
Worm and storm; chaise, chaos, chair;
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Ivy, privy; famous; clamour,
And enamour rime with “hammer”.
Pussy, hussy and possess,
Desert, but dessert, address.
Golf, wolf; countenants; lieutenants
Hoist, in lieu of flags, left pennants.
River, rival; tomb, bomb, comb;
Doll and roll, and some and home.
Stranger does not rime with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Soul, but foul; and gaunt, but aunt;
Font, front, won’t; want, grand and grant;
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then; singer, ginger, linger.
Real, zeal; mauve, gauze and gauge;
Marriage, foliage, mirage, age.
Query does not rime with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post; and doth, cloth, loth;
Job, Job; blossom, bosom, oath.
Though the difference seems little
We say actual, but victual;
Seat, sweat; chaste, caste; Leigh, eight, height;
Put, nut; granite but unite.
Reefer does not rime with deafer,
Feoffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Dull, bull; Geoffrey, George; ate, late;
Hint, pint; senate, but sedate.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific;
Science, conscience, scientific.
Tour, but our, and succour, four;
Gas, alas and Arkansas!
Sea, idea, guinea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern; cleanse and clean;
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian.
Dandelion with battalion,
Sally with ally, Yea, Ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, key, quay.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, receiver.
Never guess–it is not safe;
We say calves, valves; half, but Ralf.
Heron, granary, canary;
Crevice and device and eyrie;
Face, preface, but efface,
Phlegm, phlegmatic; ass, glass, bass;
Large, but target, gin, give, verging;
Ought, out, joust and scour, but scourging;
Ear, but earn; and wear and tear
Do not rime with “here” but “ere”.
Seven is right, but so is even;
Hyphen, roughen, nephew, Stephen;
Monkey, donkey; clerk and jerk;
Asp, 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 “groats”?
It’s a dark abyss or tunnel,
Strewn with stones, like rowlock, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.
Don’t you think so, reader, rather
Saying lather, bather, father?
Finally: which rimes with “enough”,
Though, through, plough, cough, hough or tough?
Hiccough has the sound of “cup”,
My advice is … give it up!

Page last updated 01-05-22

Aferdita Bogdanovic
In Chapter 2 of “Beyond the Pleasure Principle”, Freud expresses the theory through an 18-month-old child and his actions. The game was known as “fort-da”, also known as the game of “disappearance and return”. The child repeatedly throws a wooden reel tied with a string around it over his crib. Freud related this game to that of his mother leaving and returning whenever he would throw the object unattached. This is the pleasure and pain theory. When the 18-month-old child would throw the toy over the crib, it resembles his mom leaving which is a painful experience. However, when the child would retrieve his toy, it showed that his mom returned which was a pleasurable experience. By the toy having a string attached to it, it shows Freud’s pleasure and pain theory. This game relates to the ideas of Freud because it shows that people seek pleasure and avoid pain. In doing this they take control of the situation.
Freud’s Pleasure and Pain theory is comparable to Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” because they both have to face reality in one-way or another. The 18 month old, realizes that his mother is not always going to be around for him to experience pleasure. He also realized that with pleasure comes pain. The men in the cave realized that their imagination of life outside the cave wasn’t what they expected. He experienced life outside of what he was used to. By experiencing life outside the cave, the man would feel upset that their expectations were not met but at the same time experienced pleasure for seeing new things.



In Chapter 2 of Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle, he concentrates the majority of this chapter onto his observations of a Child’s Play. In his observations, Freud had noticed that a child would “allow” a beloved/pleasurable toy to disappear his play. Freud mentioned that instead of, for example, combining his favorite toy (the reel w. the string) with the his other toys, instead, the child behaves somewhat masochistically, continually depriving himself of his favorite toy in order to see it return again (hence the name fort da :going away/there). This game is very important to Freud’s theories as from my primitive and basic knowledge of Freud, he seem to base many of his theories on adult actions being subconsciously influenced by traumas and neuroses developed in childhood. In addition, this fort da/child’s play stage is seems to at least deflate a good amount of the presumption that “pleasure” is the driving force of a person’s conscious and subconscious goals (as even a child in his most primitive stage of development would act in a manner that would contradict the pleasure principle).

The only comparison I can see between chapter two and Plato’s allegory is their use of “stages” to describe different stages of human development. Both authors/writes seem to focus their writings on the mental development of a human. Although, in this particular excerpt Freud did not elaborate on the child’s stages development and also made no reference to some of his more controversial theories (which, to my limited knowledge has something to do with a child’s oral, anal, genital fixations etc.) This however, tells me that happiness can also be motivated subconsciously, although since I lack any anecdotal “proofs” as I do not remember most my early childhood.

-Allen Chan