For anyone who claims “English is easier”, I present you The Chaos Poem:
<span style="color:#323232;">The Chaos
</span><span style="color:#323232;">by Gerard Nolst Trenité
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Dearest creature in creation
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Studying English pronunciation,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">I will teach you in my verse
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">I will keep you, Susy, busy,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Make your head with heat grow dizzy;
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Tear in eye, your dress you'll tear;
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Queer, fair seer, hear my prayer.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Pray, console your loving poet,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Make my coat look new, dear, sew it!
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Just compare heart, hear and heard,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Dies and diet, lord and word.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Sword and sward, retain and Britain
</span><span style="color:#323232;">(Mind the latter how it's written).
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Made has not the sound of bade,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Say-said, pay-paid, laid but plaid.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Now I surely will not plague you
</span><span style="color:#323232;">With such words as vague and ague,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">But be careful how you speak,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Say: gush, bush, steak, streak, break, bleak ,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Previous, precious, fuchsia, via
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Recipe, pipe, studding-sail, choir;
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Woven, oven, how and low,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Script, receipt, shoe, poem, toe.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Say, expecting fraud and trickery:
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Daughter, laughter and Terpsichore,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Branch, ranch, measles, topsails, aisles,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Missiles, similes, reviles.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Wholly, holly, signal, signing,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Same, examining, but mining,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Solar, mica, war and far.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">From "desire": desirable-admirable from "admire",
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Lumber, plumber, bier, but brier,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Topsham, brougham, renown, but known,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Knowledge, done, lone, gone, none, tone,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">One, anemone, Balmoral,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Gertrude, German, wind and wind,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Beau, kind, kindred, queue, mankind,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Tortoise, turquoise, chamois-leather,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Reading, Reading, heathen, heather.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">This phonetic labyrinth
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Gives moss, gross, brook, brooch, ninth, plinth.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Have you ever yet endeavoured
</span><span style="color:#323232;">To pronounce revered and severed,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Demon, lemon, ghoul, foul, soul,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Peter, petrol and patrol?
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Billet does not end like ballet;
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Blood and flood are not like food,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Nor is mould like should and would.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Banquet is not nearly parquet,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Which exactly rhymes with khaki.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Discount, viscount, load and broad,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Toward, to forward, to reward,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Ricocheted and crocheting, croquet?
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Right! Your pronunciation's OK.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Friend and fiend, alive and live.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Is your r correct in higher?
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Keats asserts it rhymes Thalia.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Hugh, but hug, and hood, but hoot,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Buoyant, minute, but minute.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Say abscission with precision,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Now: position and transition;
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Would it tally with my rhyme
</span><span style="color:#323232;">If I mentioned paradigm?
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Twopence, threepence, tease are easy,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">But cease, crease, grease and greasy?
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Cornice, nice, valise, revise,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Rabies, but lullabies.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Of such puzzling words as nauseous,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Rhyming well with cautious, tortious,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">You'll envelop lists, I hope,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">In a linen envelope.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Would you like some more? You'll have it!
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Affidavit, David, davit.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">To abjure, to perjure. Sheik
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Does not sound like Czech but ache.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Rachel, loch, moustache, eleven.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">We say hallowed, but allowed,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">People, leopard, towed but vowed.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Mark the difference, moreover,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Between mover, plover, Dover.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Chalice, but police and lice,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Camel, constable, unstable,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Principle, disciple, label.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Petal, penal, and canal,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Wait, surmise, plait, promise, pal,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Suit, suite, ruin. Circuit, conduit
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Rhyme with "shirk it" and "beyond it",
</span><span style="color:#323232;">But it is not hard to tell
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Why it's pall, mall, but Pall Mall.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Muscle, muscular, gaol, iron,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Timber, climber, bullion, lion,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Senator, spectator, mayor,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Has the a of drachm and hammer.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Pussy, hussy and possess,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Desert, but desert, address.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Golf, wolf, countenance, lieutenants
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Hoist in lieu of flags left pennants.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Courier, courtier, tomb, bomb, comb,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Cow, but Cowper, some and home.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">"Solder, soldier! Blood is thicker",
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Quoth he, "than liqueur or liquor",
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Making, it is sad but true,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">In bravado, much ado.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Neither does devour with clangour.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Pilot, pivot, gaunt, but aunt,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Font, front, wont, want, grand and grant.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Arsenic, specific, scenic,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Relic, rhetoric, hygienic.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Gooseberry, goose, and close, but close,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Paradise, rise, rose, and dose.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Say inveigh, neigh, but inveigle,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Make the latter rhyme with eagle.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Mind! Meandering but mean,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Valentine and magazine.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">And I bet you, dear, a penny,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">You say mani-(fold) like many,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Which is wrong. Say rapier, pier,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Tier (one who ties), but tier.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Arch, archangel; pray, does erring
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Rhyme with herring or with stirring?
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Prison, bison, treasure trove,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Treason, hover, cover, cove,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Perseverance, severance. Ribald
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Rhymes (but piebald doesn't) with nibbled.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Phaeton, paean, gnat, ghat, gnaw,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Lien, psychic, shone, bone, pshaw.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Don't be down, my own, but rough it,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">And distinguish buffet, buffet;
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Brood, stood, roof, rook, school, wool, boon,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Worcester, Boleyn, to impugn.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Say in sounds correct and sterling
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Hearse, hear, hearken, year and yearling.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Evil, devil, mezzotint,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Mind the z! (A gentle hint.)
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Now you need not pay attention
</span><span style="color:#323232;">To such sounds as I don't mention,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Sounds like pores, pause, pours and paws,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Rhyming with the pronoun yours;
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Nor are proper names included,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Though I often heard, as you did,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Funny rhymes to unicorn,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Yes, you know them, Vaughan and Strachan.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">No, my maiden, coy and comely,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">I don't want to speak of Cholmondeley.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">No. Yet Froude compared with proud
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Is no better than McLeod.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">But mind trivial and vial,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Tripod, menial, denial,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Troll and trolley, realm and ream,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Schedule, mischief, schism, and scheme.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Argil, gill, Argyll, gill. Surely
</span><span style="color:#323232;">May be made to rhyme with Raleigh,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">But you're not supposed to say
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Piquet rhymes with sobriquet.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Had this invalid invalid
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Worthless documents? How pallid,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">How uncouth he, couchant, looked,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">When for Portsmouth I had booked!
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Zeus, Thebes, Thales, Aphrodite,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Paramour, enamoured, flighty,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Episodes, antipodes,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Acquiesce, and obsequies.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Please don't monkey with the geyser,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Don't peel 'taters with my razor,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Rather say in accents pure:
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Nature, stature and mature.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Pious, impious, limb, climb, glumly,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Worsted, worsted, crumbly, dumbly,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Conquer, conquest, vase, phase, fan,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Wan, sedan and artisan.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">The th will surely trouble you
</span><span style="color:#323232;">More than r, ch or w.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Say then these phonetic gems:
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Thomas, thyme, Theresa, Thames.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Thompson, Chatham, Waltham, Streatham,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">There are more but I forget 'em-
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Wait! I've got it: Anthony,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Lighten your anxiety.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">The archaic word albeit
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Does not rhyme with eight-you see it;
</span><span style="color:#323232;">With and forthwith, one has voice,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">One has not, you make your choice.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Shoes, goes, does *. Now first say: finger;
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Then say: singer, ginger, linger.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Real, zeal, mauve, gauze and gauge,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Marriage, foliage, mirage, age,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Hero, heron, query, very,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Parry, tarry fury, bury,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Dost, lost, post, and doth, cloth, loth,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Job, Job, blossom, bosom, oath.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Faugh, oppugnant, keen oppugners,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Bowing, bowing, banjo-tuners
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Holm you know, but noes, canoes,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Puisne, truism, use, to use?
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Though the difference seems little,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">We say actual, but victual,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Seat, sweat, chaste, caste, Leigh, eight, height,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Put, nut, granite, and unite.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Reefer does not rhyme with deafer,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Feoffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Dull, bull, Geoffrey, George, ate, late,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Hint, pint, senate, but sedate.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Gaelic, Arabic, pacific,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Science, conscience, scientific;
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Tour, but our, dour, succour, four,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Say manoeuvre, yacht and vomit,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Next omit, which differs from it
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Bona fide, alibi
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Gyrate, dowry and awry.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Sea, idea, guinea, area,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Compare alien with Italian,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Dandelion with battalion,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Rally with ally; yea, ye,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, key, quay!
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Say aver, but ever, fever,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Neither, leisure, skein, receiver.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Never guess-it is not safe,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">We say calves, valves, half, but Ralf.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Starry, granary, canary,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Crevice, but device, and eyrie,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Face, but preface, then grimace,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Bass, large, target, gin, give, verging,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Ought, oust, joust, and scour, but scourging;
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Ear, but earn; and ere and tear
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Do not rhyme with here but heir.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Mind the o of off and often
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Which may be pronounced as orphan,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">With the sound of saw and sauce;
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Also soft, lost, cloth and cross.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Pudding, puddle, putting. Putting?
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Yes: at golf it rhymes with shutting.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Respite, spite, consent, resent.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Liable, but Parliament.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Seven is right, but so is even,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Hyphen, roughen, nephew, Stephen,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Monkey, donkey, clerk and jerk,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Asp, grasp, wasp, demesne, cork, work.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">A of valour, vapid vapour,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">S of news (compare newspaper),
</span><span style="color:#323232;">G of gibbet, gibbon, gist,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">I of antichrist and grist,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Differ like diverse and divers,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Rivers, strivers, shivers, fivers.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Once, but nonce, toll, doll, but roll,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Polish, Polish, poll and poll.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Pronunciation-think of Psyche!-
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Is a paling, stout and spiky.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Won't it make you lose your wits
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Writing groats and saying "grits"?
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">It's a dark abyss or tunnel
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Strewn with stones like rowlock, gunwale,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Islington, and Isle of Wight,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Housewife, verdict and indict.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Don't you think so, reader, rather,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Saying lather, bather, father?
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Finally, which rhymes with enough,
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Though, through, bough, cough, hough, sough, tough??
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Hiccough has the sound of sup...
</span><span style="color:#323232;">My advice is: Give It Up!
</span>