Following on from yesterday’s post about the difficulties of the English language, Noreen came across the following letter from one David Truman of Fulham in the London Evening Standard of 18 November 1991:

Lines in honour of the rehabilitation of Frank Bough (by an inner-London primary school teacher trying to teach children English).

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?
I write in case 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, broth in brother.
And here is not a match for there,
Nor dear for bear, or fear for pear.
There’s dose and rose, there’s also 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, and thwart and cart
Come come, I’ve barely made a start!
A dreadful language?
Man alive, Who mastered it when I was five!