It sometimes amazes me that anybody can learn our language who didn’t grow up with it.
English Pronunciation is a pleasing bit of verse by G. Nolst Trenité. It begins:
Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse…
And you can read the rest here. Lovely.
Many thanks to Dave Hodgkinson for the link.
There was a time (back when I was at school with Dave) when I could speak a reasonable amount of Esperanto. Don’t remember much now, but I still can’t help thinking it’s a good idea.
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And despite a wonderful education, I still tripped over a couple in there!
I think I’m lucky to be a native speaker of English, but I can confirm that Esperanto works! I’ve used it in speech and writing – and sung in it – in about fifteen countries over recent years.
Take a look at http://www.lernu.net
Esperanto is celebrating its 125th anniversary next year. I’m sure we’ll hear more about that shortly.
Lest anyone think Esperanto is something dead or historical, you might be interested to know of Esperanto’s current popularity which is 125 years young in 2012.
Their new online course http://www.lernu.net has 125 000 hits per day and Esperanto Wikipedia enjoys 400 000 hits per day. That can’t be bad 🙂
Feliĉan kristnaskon ; prosperan novjaron !