Simple English

No – i’m not saying English People are simple! 🙂

A friend of mine’s Czech-born wife is currently learning English as her second language – pray for her as she deals with stuff like this…

(and you might need a little prayer for yourself!?)

An English View.

When One aspires to peruse
The written word it can amuse,
Because our tongue has many Do’s
And Don’t’s which frequently confuse
Those of us so inclined to choose
To’s, when what we meant were too’s.

For if we look in one’s and two’s
At certain words we sometimes use,
And especially if we should choose
To analyse our verbal cues,
We’re phonetically inclined to lose
Track of the ways that we spell ‘-ooze’.
(8 so far!)

No bear with brane as small as Pooh’s,
Whose mental faculties (read I.Q.’s)
Are smaller than his own shoe’s,
Size, could say if we an odd number choose
Or a multiple of the Number Two’s
To count the ways we rhyme our ‘U’s’.

Writers should be forming queues
In which they seek to ask the Muse
To state, in her opinion, Who’s
Coughing up the outsanding dues
On all the ways there are to choose
To spell the words that end in ‘-oohs’.
(Now 14!)

I’ll bet no herd of stately gnus,
Nor mob of bouncing kangaroos,
Nor any beast of London Zoo’s
Ever had even the slightest clue’s
To the seemingly unending views
Of ways to rhyme the ending ‘-oos’
(That’s 19!)

Despite the warning of Uncle Hugh’s
(which coincided with his brother, Lou’s)
I’m prepared to take all I.O.U.’s
For bets relevant to the number whose
Nearest the ways there are to use
Letters of spelling sounds like ‘youse’.

And i would doubt if Lauren Tewes
Or. for that matter. Howard Hughes
Has ever stood in brand new shoes,
And mindless of a pinch or bruise,
Cried out aloud the dreadful news
That we’ve an excessive choice for writing ‘-ews’.
( That’s 25!)

So should any rabble try to accuse
Me of inflicting on such a Crew’s
Rotten Lot, a dillemma whose
Horns are as sharp as any gnu’s
Before we even start to choose
Foreign terms like: ‘bid our adieu’s’

And Americanised names like ‘Suze’;
I merely sought to express my views
On the quite substantial ways we use
Consonants, with which we fuse
Vowels in varying ones and twos,
All to ‘simply’ rhyme with ooze.

(That is a total of 29 different ways all up! 28 if you discount the foreign reference and 27 if you discount the Americanised name, which seems unfair to me as it was an American TV show (can you guess?) about someone called ‘Suze’ which started me off on this. For Australian (and French) readers i could have stuck in a reference to ‘La Perouse’ on Botany Bay (Sydney) and maybe ABBA’s ‘Vous les Vous’s’, and as well there is ‘Sioux’s’ and presumably a few more foreign spellings which could be reasonably well known to an English speaking audience but for now i’ll call it quits at 32 different ways.

If you can add any others – please don’t tell me!? 🙂 )