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.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.

Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.

Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.

Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.

Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.

Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.

Pronunciation -- think of Psyche!
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won't it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It's a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.

Finally, which rhymes with enough --
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

This is impossible as who decides? Do we reform to American pronunciation? British? Indian? Irish? Do we have different spelling in every country? Which dialect gets to be the prestige dialect in each one? Etc.

I studied physics in Holland from 1970. Colleges were in Dutch but the textbooks were English. I think that is the way it should be. I understand you are from the far east so welcome in "my" Amsterdam. Colleges in Dutch wont be very practical for you. If you need some advice from a dutch guy with some knowledge of universities, mathematics, go and amsterdam please let me know. English is a difficult language. I can speak it without thinking but I am sure I make many mistakes in grammar, idiom pronunciation and clumsiness. Even about the last sentence I am not sure wether I should replace "I" by "to". probably both are correct.

German [...] their orthography was changed within last 50 years

There are plenty of ways to give changes to English spelling without having problems with the difference between various dialects. For example,

1. some, come, rough, buff, thorough, front → sum, cum, ruf, buf, thurro, frunt
2. women → wimmen
3. split 'bow' to 'bou' and 'bo'
4. generally apply the rule that 'short vowel in front of two consonants before another vowel, or one consonant at the end of the word; and long vowel in front of one consonant before another vowel, or one consanant before an 'e' at the end of the word' premise, economy, dictionary, mineral, cashew, saturate, year, contain → premmis, ecconnommi, dictionnarry, minnerral, casshoo, satchurrate, ere, contane
5. source, course, more, bore, pour → sors, cors, mor, bor, por
6. search, lurk, curtain, smirch, earn → serch, lerk, kertn, smerch, ern

There might be some more of these, but anyway I believe these changes would not have any problem with the diversity of English dialects.

Who dicides? I don't know. But I cannot understand why neither American nor British official organization such as the government has not ever announced a spelling reform since the 17th century or maybe before when the English spelling was actually different with today's. This is not normal with other languages that I am familiar with, for example, Korean, Japanese, German, Dutch, French; since their orthography was changed within last 50 years. Therefore, I can read what is written in those languages even though I mostly do not know what it means at all; while this may never be possible with English.

Individual letters don't have consistent pronounciations in English. "bo" I'm not sure if that's supposed to be a short or long "o" for example. Honestly, I'm sorry but you don't appreciate the complexity of the situation here. Most of your replacements there wouldn't sound anything like what you think they'll sound like if someone from my dialect said them.

Something I've wondered before: is English the only language with national spelling competitions? The words they choose for those are a bit silly, but it does underline the vast complicated mess of English spelling.

Vote Yes Scotland 2014 wrote:
5/30/2013 11:57 PM

I have a spelling checker.
It came with my pea sea.
It plane lee marks four my revue
Miss steaks aye can knot sea.

Eye ran this poem threw it,
Your sure reel glad two no.
Its vary polished in it's weigh.
My checker tolled me sew.

A checker is a bless sing,
It freeze yew lodes of thyme.
It helps me right awl stiles two reed,
And aides me when I rime.

Each frays come posed up on my screen
eye trussed too bee a joule.
The checker pours o'er every word
To cheque sum spelling rule.

As for speaking a foreign language, there are three stages of a speaker's development: 1) your speech is so unskilled that native speakers can't easily understand and have to correct you a lot; 2) native speakers understand you easily but though you still make grammar and pronunciation mistakes, native speakers don't feel a need to correct you very much; 3) native speakers correct you because your speech is so good that minor errors seem important.

The fact is that most native speakers of English have very little knowledge of formal grammar; they judge by whether it "sounds right". This perception of what sounds right comes from extensive exposure to the language in ordinary speech, literature, and written text. It doesn't come from explicit rules.

And this is why I personally believe we should replay more Professional games, and less studying books on rules and technique.

We learn our native languages as children, not adults normally.

Even for adults immersion is a better way to learn language than text books. Immersion for adults is just less practical.

Eh, source? I'm curious, I've heard not the opposite but that immersion as a sole learning method only works for most people when they're young children. When you're older you normally need some other sources (not necessarily text books, but e.g. grammar drills) to go with the immersion that children don't seem to require.