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. And cork and work and card and ward And font and front and word and sword Well done! And now if 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 sakes 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, And 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 do and go, then thwart and cart. Come, come, I’ve hardly made a start! A dreadful language? Man alive! I’d mastered it when I was five.
T.S.Watt (1954)
