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A Poem to test your English Pronunciation

Pronunciation in English is always a bone of contention. A non-phonetic or semi-phonetic spelling convention makes the actual pronunciation even harder. So, here is a poem testing your English pronunciation skills. Just check if you can pronounce each of the words and give special attention to the spelling convention for each. If you can do this, you have a good understanding of English! Try this out once. The poem aptly titled as "The Chaos" is written by Gerard Nolst Trenité in 1922.

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.
Fe0ffer 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!!!

Orientation and Tutorial for Computational Linguistics

The materials provided here are part of the 3 day tuotorial program delivered UGC-NET preparing students of Tezpur university, Assam

Syllabus for Computational Linguistics in UGC-NET

COLING related questions appearing in Paper II

COLING Related questions appearing in Paper III

PPT on New Vistas and an Indian Perspective for COLING

 Introduction to Unification-based Approaches to Grammar

 

Adaptxt - the Indic Text Input Tool for Handhelds and Tablets

 

In this tech-talk session, I want to talk about an application that has been a great help bridging the language gap and digital divide across the globe.

Chances are that you have already heard of Adaptxt. Adaptxt is an acronym formed out of two words of “Adapt” and “Text”. The idea is that the tool offered under the aegis of Adaptxt is adaptable to the text. And it comes really true to its name.

Adaptxt is a keyboard cum dictionary application made particularly for mobile devices and tablet computers. As you are already aware, almost all of these devices come with only one language input tool i.e. English. That is, if you want to write something on these devices in a language other than English, chances are that you will not find any way to type type because your language is not supported by the device manufacturer. Device manufacturers like Nokia, Samsung, Micromax or several other companies that come with different software platforms, take it granted that the people’s basic need is to be able to type in English and therefore they provide support just for that language. Developing support for other languages requires much more than just localization of the software platform. It requires a lot of feedback from native language experts (linguists) as well as other resources. Therefore features like being able to type in Hindi or Bengali or Tamil is not available by default on mobiles or tablets that come with Android, Symbian or Windows Mobile platforms. If you want to be able to type in Hindi or other numerous languages, you will have to resort to external softwares and install them separately on your own.

Hinglish - हिंglish

For long since the advent of electronic communication for the common people, Hindi and other non-English languages were encoded in Roman itself. So much so that Hindi encoded in Roman and not Deonagari, the official script of the language, has earned a character of its own and has contributed much to what is now being termed as “Hinglish”.

Defining Hinglish:
No definition of Hinglish can be given for sure. No surveys are present to show who uses it, and how much and in what context this is being used. Hindi/Urdu/Hindustani, all being written in Roman can be comfortably termed as Hinglish. Going by this definition, we can safely say that there is a lot text available online and much of it has already passed the electronic communication channel (through SMSes, mails etc.)

Users of Hinglish:
There is a lot of interest in 'Hinglish', particularly from the industry. Even though a puritan view would reject the whole idea of Hinglish as an aberration, this term is going to stick. And therefore, the need to study this behaviour of the people for the sake of academics as well.
Hinglish is being used both by the native speakers and non-native speakers of Hindi/Urdu/Hindustani. Hindi/Urdu/Hindustani has been traditionally written in Devanagari script or Urdu (Nastaliqh) script. But its Hinglish avatar is now being written in Roman. And this has only increased the users of this language. Now, the whole of South Asia can be said to write this, because Hindi/Urdu/Hindustani is the lingua franca of this region.