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An English teacher in Tokyo handed her students a short poem. “Read this aloud,” she said. “It’s simple.”
The first student stood up:
*I take it you already know*
*Of tough and bough and cough and dough*
*Others may stumble, but not you*
*On hiccough, thorough, lough and through*She pronounced every ‘ough’ the same way: ‘uff.’
“No,” said the teacher. “Tough is ‘tuff.’ Bough is ‘bow.’ Cough is ‘coff.’ Dough is ‘doe.’ Hiccough is ‘hiccup.’ Thorough is ‘thur-oh.’ Lough is ‘lock.’ Through is ‘throo.'”
The student sat down without a word.
The second student tried the next line:
*Beware of heard, a dreadful word*
*That looks like beard and sounds like bird*She pronounced ‘heard’ as ‘herd’ and ‘beard’ as ‘burd.’ Wrong on both.
By the end of the poem, every student had failed at least once. The teacher collected the papers.
“This poem was written in 1922 by a Dutchman named Gerard Nolst Trenité,” she said. “His title was ‘The Chaos.’ A Dutchman. He was so baffled by English pronunciation that he wrote 274 lines about it.”
“274?”
“Yes. We only did the first eight. You’re welcome.”
A student raised her hand. “Does it get easier at the end?”
The teacher smiled. “The poem ends with: ‘My advice is — give it up.'”
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