Sunday, January 27, 2008

 

English Orthography

I was hanging out in Yahoo Answers, and ran across a question that made me look at the poem below. I was amazed at how difficult English is to spell. Oh, I'd known something like that, from the classic Desi-Lucy skit involving "cough" and "though" et al and because English and Linguistics are important to me. But I'd never seen so many impossible-to-comprehend spellings all clumped together.

Here's the poem:
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Gerard Nolst Trenité
The Chaos®

Dearest creature in creation
Studying English pronunciation,
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse.
I will keep you, Susy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy;
Tear in eye, your dress you'll tear;
Queer, fair seer, hear my prayer.
Pray, console your loving poet,
Make my coat look new, dear, sew it! 10
Just compare heart, hear 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: gush, bush, steak, streak, break, bleak,
Previous, precious, fuchsia, via, 21
Recipe, pipe, studding-sail, choir;
Woven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, shoe, poem, toe.
Say, expecting fraud and trickery:
Daughter, laughter and Terpsichore,
Branch, ranch, measles, topsails, aisles,
Missiles, similes, reviles.
Wholly, holly, signal, signing,
Same, examining, but mining, 30
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far.
From "desire": desirable-admirable from "admire",
Lumber, plumber, bier, but brier,
Topsham, brougham, renown, but known,
Knowledge, done, lone, gone, none, tone,
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel.
Gertrude, German, wind and wind,
Beau, kind, kindred, queue, mankind, 40
Tortoise, turquoise, chamois-leather,
Reading, Reading, heathen, heather.
This phonetic labyrinth
Gives moss, gross, brook, brooch, ninth,
plinth.
Have you ever yet endeavoured
To pronounce revered and severed,
Demon, lemon, ghoul, foul, soul,
Peter, petrol and patrol?
Billet does not end like ballet;
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet. 50
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Banquet is not nearly parquet,
Which exactly rhymes with khaki.
Discount, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward,
Ricocheted and crocheting, croquet?
Right! Your pronunciation's OK.
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live. 60
Is your R correct in higher?
Keats asserts it rhymes Thalia.
Hugh, but hug, and hood, but hoot,
Buoyant, minute, but minute.
Say abscission with precision,
Now: position and transition;
Would it tally with my rhyme
If I mentioned paradigm?
Twopence, threepence, tease are easy,
But cease, crease, grease and greasy? 70
Cornice, nice, valise, revise,
Rabies, but lullabies.
Of such puzzling words as nauseous,
Rhyming well with cautious, tortious,
You'll envelop lists, I hope,
In a linen envelope.
Would you like some more? You'll have it!
Affidavit, David, davit.
To abjure, to perjure. Sheik
Does not sound like Czech but ache. 80
Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, loch, 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, disciple, label. 90
Petal, penal, and canal,
Wait, surmise, plait, promise, pal,
Suit, suite, ruin. Circuit, conduit
Rhyme with "shirk it" and "beyond it",
But it is not hard to tell
Why it's pall, mall, but Pall Mall.
Muscle, muscular, gaol, iron,
Timber, climber, bullion, lion,
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor, 100
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
Has the A of drachm and hammer.
Pussy, hussy and possess,
Desert, but desert, address.
Golf, wolf, countenance, lieutenants
Hoist in lieu of flags left pennants.
Courier, courtier, tomb, bomb, comb,
Cow, but Cowper, some and home.
"Solder, soldier! Blood is thicker",
Quoth he, "than liqueur or liquor", 110
Making, it is sad but true,
In bravado, much ado.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Pilot, pivot, gaunt, but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand and grant.
Arsenic, specific, scenic,
Relic, rhetoric, hygienic.
Gooseberry, goose, and close, but close,
Paradise, rise, rose, and dose. 120
Say inveigh, neigh, but inveigle,
Make the latter rhyme with eagle.
Mind! Meandering but mean,
Valentine and magazine.
And I bet you, dear, a penny,
You say mani-(fold) like many,
Which is wrong. Say rapier, pier,
Tier (one who ties), but tier.
Arch, archangel; pray, does erring
Rhyme with herring or with stirring? 130
Prison, bison, treasure trove,
Treason, hover, cover, cove,
Perseverance, severance. Ribald
Rhymes (but piebald doesn't) with nibbled.
Phaeton, paean, gnat, ghat, gnaw,
Lien, psychic, shone, bone, pshaw.
Don't be down, my own, but rough it,
And distinguish buffet, buffet;

Brood, stood, roof, rook, school, wool, boon,
Worcester, Boleyn, to impugn. 140
Say in sounds correct and sterling
Hearse, hear, hearken, year and yearling.
Evil, devil, mezzotint,
Mind the Z! (A gentle hint.)
Now you need not pay attention
To such sounds as I don't mention,
Sounds like pores, pause, pours and paws,
Rhyming with the pronoun yours;
Nor are proper names included,
Though I often heard, as you did, 150
Funny rhymes to unicorn,
Yes, you know them, Vaughan and Strachan.
No, my maiden, coy and comely,
I don't want to speak of Cholmondeley.
No. Yet Froude compared with proud
Is no better than McLeod.
But mind trivial and vial,
Tripod, menial, denial,
Troll and trolley, realm and ream,
Schedule, mischief, schism, and scheme. 160
Argil, gill, Argyll, gill. Surely
May be made to rhyme with Raleigh,
But you're not supposed to say
Piquet rhymes with sobriquet.
Had this invalid invalid
Worthless documents? How pallid,
How uncouth he, couchant, looked,
When for Portsmouth I had booked!
Zeus, Thebes, Thales, Aphrodite,
Paramour, enamoured, flighty, 170
Episodes, antipodes,
Acquiesce, and obsequies.
Please don't monkey with the geyser,
Don't peel 'taters with my razor,
Rather say in accents pure:
Nature, stature and mature.
Pious, impious, limb, climb, glumly,
Worsted, worsted, crumbly, dumbly,
Conquer, conquest, vase, phase, fan,
Wan, sedan and artisan. 180
The TH will surely trouble you
More than R, CH or W.
Say then these phonetic gems:
Thomas, thyme, Theresa, Thames.
Thompson, Chatham, Waltham, Streatham,
There are more but I forget 'em-
Wait! I've got it: Anthony,
Lighten your anxiety.
The archaic word albeit
Does not rhyme with eight-you see it; 190
With and forthwith, one has voice,
One has not, you make your choice.
Shoes, goes, does*. Now first say: finger;
Then say: singer, ginger, linger.
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, age,
Hero, heron, query, very,
Parry, tarry fury, bury,
Dost, lost, post, and doth, cloth, loth,
Job, Job, blossom, bosom, oath. 200
Faugh, oppugnant, keen oppugners,
Bowing, bowing, banjo-tuners
Holm you know, but noes, canoes,
Puisne, truism, use, to use?
Though the difference seems little,
We say actual, but victual,
Seat, sweat, chaste, caste, Leigh, eight, height,
Put, nut, granite, and unite.
Reefer does not rhyme with deafer,
Feoffer does, and zephyr, heifer. 210
Dull, bull, Geoffrey, George, ate, late,
Hint, pint, senate, but sedate.
Gaelic, Arabic, pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific;
Tour, but our, dour, succour, four,
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Say manoeuvre, yacht and vomit,
Next omit, which differs from it
Bona fide, alibi
Gyrate, dowry and awry. 220
Sea, idea, guinea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean,
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion with battalion,
Rally with ally; yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, key, quay!
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, receiver. 230
Never guess-it is not safe,
We say calves, valves, half, but Ralf.
Starry, granary, canary,
Crevice, but device, and eyrie,
Face, but preface, then grimace,
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Bass, large, target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, oust, joust, and scour, but scourging;
Ear, but earn; and ere and tear
Do not rhyme with here but heir. 240
Mind the O of off and often
Which may be pronounced as orphan,
With the sound of saw and sauce;
Also soft, lost, cloth and cross.
Pudding, puddle, putting. Putting?
Yes: at golf it rhymes with shutting.
Respite, spite, consent, resent.
Liable, but Parliament.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew, Stephen, 250
Monkey, donkey, clerk and jerk,
Asp, grasp, wasp, demesne, cork, work.
A of valour, vapid vapour,
S of news (compare newspaper),
G of gibbet, gibbon, gist,
I of antichrist and grist,
Differ like diverse and divers,
Rivers, strivers, shivers, fivers.
Once, but nonce, toll, doll, but roll,
Polish, Polish, poll and poll. 260
Pronunciation-think of Psyche!-
Is a paling, stout and spiky.
Won't it make you lose your wits
Writing groats and saying 'grits'?
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? 270
Finally, which rhymes with enough,
Though, through, bough, cough, hough,
sough, tough??
Hiccough has the sound of sup.
My advice is: GIVE IT UP!

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


This led to a forum where someone asked, innocently yet sincerly, "Why don't we spel phonetically?" I've thought about this a bit, but I think my answer falls into the knee-jerk curmudgeon-speak: "Because I like the English the way I learned it." But this is another topic for another time.



Sunday, January 13, 2008

 

Letting go

It’s Sunday afternoon and my big son is taking my small son back to my ex-wife.

I’ve been thinking that there isn't much left between my small son Schaffe and me. The ex, Bonnie, won't allow him to bring his homework, so I’m excluded from his academic life. I’ve devolved into a biweekly babysitter with a requisite duty to entertain him. I’m a diversion, not a parent. I’ve gotta think more about this, but I’m not pleased.

Once again, he had a problem with me but took it to someone else. Two days ago, he told his shrink that he is uncomfortable if I talk about Bonnie. (Probably because I have a lot of bad things to say about her. This makes him uncomfortable and I guess it's so. No one wants to hear bad things about their mom, especially if the listener discerns that there is more than a grain of truth in the rants.) But he didn't talk to me, he talked to his shrink. This is OK because it’s a communication that’ll help him. He needs to trust his shrink. I’m not sure he trusts anyone. Even though he kow-tows to his mother, I’m not sure there’s any trust there.

Once again, I didn't get anything like access to his schoolwork. I see my relationship with him as just movies, food, and little else. He doesn't need me for food and he has plenty of movies. I don't get to talk to him about anything that I regard as parenting because that would take us to the realm of values. And any values that conflict with Bonnie's would make him feel bad, so parenting is not going to happen. All I have left is the movies, the popcorn, and a bit of welding. (She doesn't weld nor does she help him to weld. Apparently spending money is a more worthwhile activity, but I wax sardonic.)

If a job in Iraq comes through, I won’t be seeing much of him, perhaps obviating any stress over my opportunity to be a parent to him.

I can’t force him to behave like my son because I think the divorce has put him in an awkward position. He’d have to want me to parent him, and his mother won’t allow him to do that. He’ll need to choose to be my son and to let me be his father. Unfortunately, I don’t see this occurring soon.

Can he make such a choice? I don’t think so. His mother won’t allow that.

His mother has a plan, though she’s not stated so to me. She wants me to have as little influence on him as possible because this is another of her “all or nothing” approaches that she won’t abandon. Oh, she’s smart enough to avoid a direct conflict with any court order, but she pushes the envelope there, too. I will see him every two weeks because the court order says so. But I won’t have the ability to be involved in his life much because she talks to him until he sees things the way she wants, including his comfort level with me seeing his schoolwork. This is part of his “enmeshed” situation with his mother.

But nope, this is about me letting go, letting go of my care for him, of anything like a sense of responsibility for the way he grows into adulthood. My son will be 16 this month. He’s lived with his mother for 14 months. He’s lived with her considerable influence for longer than that. No, he’s lived under her considerable influence for longer, that’s what I really mean.

Let me explain a bit. “All or nothing” is her approach to how she wants everyone to accept her. Sure, she doesn’t mind if you favor strawberry ice cream while she chooses chocolate. Why? Because your choice doesn’t reflect on her as a person, on her value system, on her merit as a mother and human being. None of us are perfect, and we all make mistakes from time to time. But for her, she needs everyone in the family to accept her position as alpha bitch and accept her as all-knowing, all-loving and all-caring. One may not disagree with her if disagreement reflects on her abilities, her morals, or her behavior.

Thus it’s fine to like different ice cream but if one should disagree with her financial management skills, this shakes her value system. That’s what I did, and that’s what she can’t forgive. She can’t accept that she was wrong. Not just a wee bit wrong, like getting the answer wrong in the third decimal place. Nope. She was wrong, dead wrong, in choosing to make financial decisions with our community money. She took us from financial security to financial hopelessness. She paid bills, though not all of them, and didn’t account for where the money went. Why? Was it mere foolishness? We can’t discuss that because the topic is off limits to her. She took her $12K retirement annuity (with a $4k penalty) without saying a word to me. The next year when she got fired, she said that they cheated her out of her retirement. (I learned this truth a couple of months ago, when I found a letter from her old employer from 1997; she left in 1998.) A few years ago, she stopped paying the mortgage until we got foreclosed. After we sold the condo, she took $100K from our joint account because it was “her” money and she didn’t want me to know where she put it.

So if I talk finances with my son, it’s hard to avoid dwelling on how I got here, with a few months left before I have to leave, too. When I leave, it’ll probably be to a place where I can live on my meager retirement and social security.

Either that Iraq job or my dismal financial outlook will take me somewhere else. And I won’t see my small son very much. It’s nothing I want, but I’m not sure the alternative is better. If I were to remain in the area, I might remain only a biweekly movie-and-popcorn ticket, not a parent.

More dilemma: I can’t just leave, skulking off in the night. If I tell him I’m leaving, I want him to know why. It’s not “I don’t feel like seeing you any more,” it’s “I can’t afford to live here.” I could try leaving it at that- “I can’t afford to live here anymore,” but the unspoken “why” will lead to his mother. And criticism of his mother, even unspoken criticism, will make him feel bad.

So the only thing I can do is let go. I’m not quite there yet, but I’m trying that particular feeling on, like I did when I divorced my ex-wife. I didn’t like the feeling then and I don’t like it now, but it’s not quite as soul-shattering as I’d feared. Maybe letting go of my small son won’t be as painful as I think it’ll be. I console myself with knowing it doesn’t have to be like with his mother- I don’t have to let go forever, just for awhile, and just until I’ll get a chance to be a father again.


This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?