英语发音系列五：英语母语的人都不能完全读准的诗（1）

在之前的《英语发音系列》里，我介绍了著名品牌Louis Vuitton（路易斯威登），Gucci（古驰），YSL（圣罗兰）以及H&M的正确发音，并示范朗读和解析了与品牌相关的一些文章。感兴趣的读者请查看本公众号历史文章进行阅读和收听。我强烈建议读者也根据示范大声朗读起来，读的多了，一方面发音越来越熟练，另一方面对于听力（listening）也是一个很好的锻炼：试想，如果你已经朗读的很熟练，怎么会反过来听不懂呢？

今天的文章用现下常用的词来说就是有些“超纲”了，因为我要介绍并示范朗读一首号称“90%的英语母语的人都不能完全读准的诗”，名字叫做”The Chaos”（混沌，混乱的意思）。

关于这首诗有两点比较有趣的地方，第一是它居然不是英语母语的人写的，作者是Dr. Gerard Nolst Trenité，是一位荷兰人；第二是它发表于1920年，属于很早的英语学习者“抱怨”英语发音“捉摸不定”的文章了。对于英语发音“飘忽不定”这一点，相信各位读者并不陌生，明明也是一门拼写语言，为什么很多看起来一模一样的组合，在不同的单词里面发音就变了呢？比如怎么“question”的那个“-tion”和“nation”的“-tion”就发音不一样了？一个著名的例子就是有人故意把“fish”这个单词拼写成“ghoti”，因为“enough”里面的“gh”发/f/音，“women”里面的“o”发/i/音，而“nation”里面的“ti”发/ʃ/音，这样组合起来的话应该发/fɪʃ/没错的啊。

在这首长达270多行的诗里，作者详细列出了很多连英语母语的人都防不胜防的“陷阱”单词，我会分三部分进行朗读示范（美音）和解析注释，今天是第一部分。

正文：

Dearest creature in creation,

Study English pronunciation.

I will teach you in my verse

Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.

I will keep you, Suzy, busy,

Make your head with heat grow dizzy.

Tear in eye, your dress will tear.

So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.

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.)

Now I surely will not plague you

With such words as plaque and ague.

But be careful how you speak:

Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;

Cloven, oven, how and low,

Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.

Hear me say, devoid of trickery,

Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,

Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,

Exiles, similes, and reviles;

Scholar, vicar, and cigar,

Solar, mica, war and far;

One, anemone, Balmoral,

Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;

Gertrude, German, wind and mind,

Scene, Melpomene, mankind.

Billet does not rhyme with ballet,

Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.

Blood and flood are not like food,

Nor is mould like should and would.

Viscous, viscount, load and broad,

Toward, to forward, to reward.

And your pronunciation’s OK

When you correctly say croquet,

Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,

Friend and fiend, alive and live.

Ivy, privy, famous; clamour

And enamour rhyme with hammer.

注释：

Ague： /ˈeɪɡjuː/，a fever in which your body shakes, especially one caused by malaria

Terpsichore：/tɜ˞ːpˈsɪk.ər.i/ ，in Greek mythology (= ancient stories), the muse (= one of the nine goddesses who gave encouragement in different areas of the arts) of dance:

Anemone：/əˈnɛməni/, A plant of the buttercup family which typically has brightly coloured flowers and deeply divided leaves.

Balmoral： /balˈmɒr(ə)l/, A round brimless hat with a cockade or ribbons attached, worn by certain Scottish regiments，另一个意思是A heavy laced leather walking boot.

Lichen：/ˈlɑɪ·kən/，a type of organism that consists of an alga (= plant without leaves or roots) and a fungus (= plant without leaves, flowers, or color) growing together

Laurel： /ˈlɒr(ə)l/，Any of a number of shrubs and other plants with dark green glossy leaves. 复数Laurels意思是“Honour or praise awarded for an achievement.”，比如：

‘she has rightly won laurels for this brilliantly perceptive first novel’

Gertrude：/ɡɜːrtruːd/，female given name

Melpomene：/mɛlˈpɒmɪni/，The Muse of tragedy.

Chalet：/ʃæˈleɪ/， a small, wooden house found in the mountains and used esp. by people on vacation

Croquet：/kroʊˈkeɪ/，a game in which players use mallets (= long wooden hammers) to hit wooden balls through small metal arches sunk in the grass

Fiend：/fiːnd/，an evil and cruel person，比如：

He was portrayed in the media as a complete fiend.

​也可以指“someone who likes something very much or is very interested in something:” ，比如：

McCormack is a fiend for punctuality.

Privy：/ˈprɪv·i/，having secret knowledge，比如：

Only top management was privy to (= knew about) the proposed merger.

Clamour：/ˈklæm.ɚ/，to make a loud complaint or demand，比如：

The children were all clamouring for attention.

也可以指“a loud complaint about something or a demand for something”​，比如:

After the bombing, there was a public clamour for vengeance.

知识奇妙如斯。

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