- Hello, this is Jack from tofluency.com
and this is why the English language
is hard to learn, part 2.
Now, be sure to stay until the end,
because I have an important lesson for you.
And, basically, I'm going to give you the key
to why I am making this video.
Now, today, we are going to read a poem
by Gerard Nolst Trenite.
And, it was written in 1920
by this Dutch writer, traveler, and teacher.
And, it's called "The Chaos"
and it says that this is a poem demonstrating
the irregularity of English spelling and pronunciation.
So, it's outlining the fact that English isn't phonetic,
that you can't know how a word is said
just from the spelling alone.
So, it's going to give us some examples of where
you're going to see words that have similar spellings
but different vowel sounds.
Okay?
So, let me read this poem to you,
but before I do, know that I had to look up
quite a few of the words here, because I didn't know
what some of them meant and I didn't know
how to say some of them.
And I'm probably going to make one or two mistakes in this,
and I'll let you know in the comments section if I do.
So, I'm going to read you this poem now.
And then, like I said, at the end,
I've got an important lesson from this poem.
Okay.
Here we go.
"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, fuchsia, via,
"pipe, snipe, recipe, and choir.
"Cloven, oven, how, and low,
"script, receipt, shoe, poem, toe."
Okay, so that is the poem.
It is difficult to read.
Something that is interesting is
if we go back to this part here.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard.
When these words are part of a different sentence,
for example, we have a heart, and grow my beard,
he heard that, then I have no problem
saying them automatically.
But, when they're all together, you have to think about it
a little bit, and think, "Okay, what?
"Oh yeah, that word, that word, and that word."
So, the first thing is that, while this poem
is fun and it is difficult to read,
it's not representative of normal English.
So, it has been written in a way
to make it difficult to read to outline the fact
that when you have the word combo or letter combinations,
such as E-A-R, there could be three different
vowel sounds here.
Now, another example which isn't in this poem
is O-U-G-H.
There are many different ways that you can say,
I think there are eight in total,
O-U-G-H, like though, through,
plough, thought, for example.
I don't want you to try and read this poem
and then feel down about it.
I don't want you to say, "Ugh, English is too hard,"
because the key is this.
If you do the right things in English,
and if you get lots of listening practice,
and if you learn how words are pronounced,
either through online dictionaries, or by listening,
or by reading and listening at the same time,
then you're just going to naturally know
how to say these words.
Don't think about this as a logical problem,
the fact that we can have these letter combinations
that have different vowel sounds,
because if you do that, you're just going to feel down
about the fact that logically,
English is difficult to learn.
So, do the right things in English.
Do things like listening and reading at the same time.
Look up how a word is pronounced.
Listen a lot to English.
And then, you're just going to internalize
the way that words are said.
Just like everyone else who has learned English
has done in the past.
So, again, this poem is a bit of fun,
it's like a challenge, but don't take it too seriously.
Don't feel down and don't get upset about the fact
that, yes, English can be heard to learn.
But, just focus on doing the right things
and you are going to make fantastic progress
with your English.
Now, just another quick thing on this.
There are other languages in the world
that are difficult to learn because of a certain reason.
For example, in Spanish, you can conjugate a verb
in various different ways.
So, I see memes and pictures that say,
like, a verb in English, the different ways
to conjugate the verb, okay?
And then, you have the verb in Spanish
and the different ways to conjugate the verb.
And, when I was learning Spanish, I looked at this
and thought, "Ugh, this is difficult.
"How am I ever going to learn it?"
But, I used methods like the To Fluency method
just to internalize the conjugations,
to learn Spanish through sentences,
and then, learn the most commonly used phrases
and internalize that type of grammar.
So again, it's just about doing the right things
and don't worry about why something might be
difficult to learn.
Just do the right things on a daily and consistent basis
and make fantastic progress.
Okay, if you have enjoyed this lesson,
please like and share it.
Go to the description and check out lessons
that are similar to this one.
And also, I've got some great resources for you.
Things like my book "The 5-Step Plan for English Fluency",
which is free to download, and also, the To Fluency program,
which teaches you things like
how to say vowel sounds, consonant sounds, minimal pairs,
the schwa sounds, connected speed, relaxed pronunciation,
everything you need to know
in order to be able to speak English fluently.
So, go check that out too.
Thank you so much for watching.
Buh-bye for now.
(upbeat electronic music)