Hugo Says ESL is More Difficult than Doggerel!

Have you ever been confused by the English language?

Hugo says he knows Doggerel and is trying to learn ESL (English as a Second Language). Bi-lingualism is very helpful in today's world and many people speak at least 2 languages! If Grandma is able to teach Hugo to read he'll be a well educated poopy dog.

In 1989 Richard Lederer wrote an article asking questions to which there appear to be no answers!

The following poem is by Richard Keogh. Try to read it without mispronouncing a word, then ask your English major friends to try it - be sure to keep track of how many words they mispronounce!!!

I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough.
Others may stumble, but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, slough and through.
Well done! And now 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 sake, 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,
Nor 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 cork and work and card and ward,
And font and front and word and sword.
And do and go, then thwart and cart.
Come, come, I've hardly made a start.

A dreadful language? Why man alive,
I learned to talk it when I was five;
And yet to write it, the more I try,
I haven't learned it at fifty-five.


Hugo says he's going to have to spend more time on 'ESL' but first he needs a nap!