English Chaos

Sketch of Gerard Nolst Trenité aka Charivarius

In the spirit of the ‘English, English’ article two weeks ago and recent essays about the madness of the language, I dug out a copy of ‘The Chaos’. Its author, Gerard Nolst Trenité, who went by the nom de plume of Charivarius, was a Dutch writer, traveller, law and political science student, teacher, playwright, and noted contributor to the English language. More than a century ago, he gathered some 800 trickiest English irregularities into a 274 line poem called ‘The Chaos’ as a practice suite for his students.

Subsequent versions were adopted and maintained by the Simplified Spelling Society. Abrupt lapses in style and occasional losses of mètre suggest others may have tinkered with the piece, much like a recipient ‘improves’ an email tidbit before passing it along. Trenité himself dropped and added words in subsequent versions, and popular stanzas have been restored by historians. Any way it’s viewed, the collection impresses readers a hundred years later.

Note: This rendition carries over the formatting and indentation passed down by Trenité. Originally staggered couplets hinted at senses of masculine and feminine as used in other Romance languages, and they can still be comfortably read with alternating male and female voices.

Here now is…

The Chaos

by Gerard Nolst Trenité writing as Charivarius

Dearest creature in Creation,

Studying English pronunciation,

I will teach you in my verse

Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.

I will keep you, Susy,† busy,

Make your head with heat grow dizzy;

Tear in eye, your dress you'll tear;

So shall I! Oh, hear my prayer.

Pray, console your loving poet,

Make my coat look new, dear, sew it!

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!)

Made has not the sound of bade,

Say-said, pay-paid, laid, but plaid.

Now I surely will not plague you

With such words as vague and ague,

But be careful how you speak,

Say break, steak, but bleak and streak.

Previous, precious, fuchsia, via;

Pipe, snipe, recipe and choir,

Cloven, oven; how and low;

Script, receipt; shoe, poem, toe.

Hear me say, devoid of trickery:

Daughter, laughter and Terpsichore,

Typhoid; measles, topsails, aisles;

Exiles, similes, reviles;

Wholly, holly; signal, signing;

Thames; examining, combining;

Scholar, vicar, and cigar,

Solar, mica, war, and far.

From 'desire': desirable– admirable from 'admire';

Lumber, plumber, bier, but brier;

Chatham, brougham; renown but known,

Knowledge; done, but gone and tone,

One, anemone; Balmoral;

Kitchen, lichen; laundry, laurel;

Gertrude, German; wind and mind;

Scene, Melpomene, mankind;

Tortoise, turquoise, chamois-leather,

Reading, Reading, heathen, heather.

This phonetic labyrinth

Gives moss, gross, brook, brooch, ninth, plinth.

Have you ever yet endeavoured

To pronounce revered and severed,

Demon, lemon, ghoul, foul, soul,

Peter, petrol and patrol?

Billet does not end like ballet;

Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.

Blood and flood are not like food,

Nor is mould like should and would.

Banquet is not nearly parquet,

Which is said to rhyme with 'darkly'.

Viscous, viscount; load and broad;

Toward, to forward, to reward,

Ricocheted and crocheting, croquet?

And your pronunciation's okay.

Rounded, wounded; grieve and sieve;

Friend and fiend; alive and live.

Is your R correct in higher?

Keats asserts it rhymes Thalia.

Hugh, but hug, and hood, but hoot,

Buoyant, minute, but minute.

Say abscission with precision,

Now: position and transition.

Would it tally with my rhyme

If I mentioned paradigm?

Twopence, threepence, tease are easy,

But cease, crease, grease and greasy?

Cornice, nice, valise, revise,

Rabies, but lullabies.

Of such puzzling words as nauseous,

Rhyming well with cautious, tortious,

You'll envelop lists, I hope,

In a linen envelope.

Would you like some more? You'll have it!

Affidavit, David, davit.

To abjure, to perjure. Sheik

Does not sound like Czech but ache.

Liberty, library; heave and heaven;

Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven,

We say hallowed, but allowed;

People, leopard; towed, but vowed.

Mark the difference, moreover,

Between mover, plover, Dover,

Leeches, breeches; wise, precise;

Chalice but police and lice.

Camel, constable, unstable;

Principle, disciple; label;

Petal, penal, and canal;

Wait, surmise, plait, promise; pal.

Suit, suite, ruin; circuit, conduit

Rhyme with 'shirk it' and 'beyond it.'

But it is not hard to tell

Why it's pall, mall, but Pall Mall.

Muscle, muscular; gaol, iron;

Timber, climber; bullion, lion,

Worm and storm; chaise, chaos, chair;

Senator, spectator, mayor.

Ivy, privy, famous; clamour

And enamour rime with 'hammer.'

Pussy, hussy, and possess,

Desert, but desert, address.

Golf, wolf, countenance, lieutenants

Hoist in lieu of flags left pennants.

Courier, courtier, tomb, bomb, comb,

Cow, but Cowper, some, and home.

Solder, soldier! Blood is thicker,

Quoth he, 'than liqueur or liquor',

Making, it is sad but true,

In bravado, much ado.

Stranger does not rhyme with anger,

Neither does devour with clangour.

Pilot, pivot, gaunt, but aunt,

Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant.

Arsenic, specific, scenic,

Relic, rhetoric, hygienic.

Gooseberry, goose, and close, but close,

Paradise, rise, rose, and dose.

Say inveigh, neigh, but inveigle,

Make the latter rhyme with eagle.

Mind! Meandering but mean,

Valentine and magazine.

And I bet you, dear, a penny,

You say mani-(fold) like many,

Which is wrong. Say rapier, pier,

Tier (one who ties), but tier.

Arch, archangel; pray, does erring

Rhyme with herring or with staring?

Prison, bison, treasure trove,

Treason, hover, cover, cove,

Perseverance, severance. Ribald

Rhymes (but piebald doesn't) with nibbled.

Phaeton, paean, gnat, ghat, gnaw,

Lien, psychic, shone, bone, pshaw.

Don't be down, my own, but rough it,

And distinguish buffet, buffet;

Brood, stood, roof, rook, school, wool, boon,

Worcester, Boleyn, to impugn.

Say in sounds correct and sterling

Hearse, hear, hearken, year and yearling.

Evil, devil, mezzotint,

Mind the Z! (A gentle hint.)

Now you need not pay attention

To such sounds as I don't mention,

Sounds like pores, pause, pours and paws,

Rhyming with the pronoun yours;

Nor are proper names included,

Though I often heard, as you did,

Funny rhymes to unicorn,

Yes, you know them, Vaughan and Strachan.

No, my maiden, coy and comely,

I don't want to speak of Cholmondeley.

No. Yet Froude compared with proud

Is no better than McLeod.

But mind trivial and vial,

Tripod, menial, denial,

Troll and trolley, realm and ream,

Schedule, mischief, schism, and scheme.

Argil, gill, Argyll, gill. Surely

May be made to rhyme with Raleigh,

But you're not supposed to say

Piquet rhymes with sobriquet.

Had this invalid invalid

Worthless documents? How pallid,

How uncouth he, couchant, looked,

When for Portsmouth I had booked!

Zeus, Thebes, Thales, Aphrodite,

Paramour, enamoured, flighty,

Episodes, antipodes,

Acquiesce, and obsequies.

Please don't monkey with the geyser,

Don't peel 'taters with my razor,

Rather say in accents pure:

Nature, stature and mature.

Pious, impious, limb, climb, glumly,

Worsted, worsted, crumbly, dumbly,

Conquer, conquest, vase, phase, fan,

Wan, sedan and artisan.

The TH will surely trouble you

More than R, CH or W.

Say then these phonetic gems:

Thomas, thyme, Theresa, Thames.

Thompson, Chatham, Waltham, Streatham,

There are more but I forget 'em—

Wait! I've got it: Anthony,

Lighten your anxiety.

The archaic word albeit

Does not rhyme with eight-you see it;

With and forthwith, one has voice,

One has not, you make your choice.

Shoes, goes, does. Now first say: finger;

Then say: singer, ginger, linger.

Real, zeal, mauve, gauze and gauge,

Marriage, foliage, mirage, age,

Hero, heron, query, very,

Parry, tarry fury, bury,

Dost, lost, post, and doth, cloth, loth,

Job, Job, blossom, bosom, oath.

Faugh, oppugnant, keen oppugners,

Bowing, bowing, banjo-tuners

Holm you know, but noes, canoes,

Puisne, truism, use, to use?

Though the difference seems little,

We say actual, but victual,

Seat, sweat, chaste, caste, Leigh, eight, height,

Put, nut, granite, and unite.

Reefer does not rhyme with deafer,

Feoffer does, and zephyr, heifer.

Dull, bull, Geoffrey, George, ate, late,

Hint, pint, senate, but sedate.

Gaelic, Arabic, pacific,

Science, conscience, scientific;

Tour, but our, dour, succour, four,

Gas, alas, and Arkansas.

Say manoeuvre, yacht and vomit,

Next omit, which differs from it

Bona fide, alibi,

Gyrate, dowry and awry.

Sea, idea, guinea, area,

Psalm, Maria, but malaria.

Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean,

Doctrine, turpentine, marine.

Compare alien with Italian,

Dandelion with battalion,

Rally with ally; yea, ye,

Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, key, quay!

Say aver, but ever, fever,

Neither, leisure, skein, receiver.

Never guess– it is not safe,

We say calves, valves, half, but Ralf.

Starry, granary, canary,

Crevice, but device, and eyrie,

Face, but preface, then grimace,

Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.

Bass, large, target, gin, give, verging,

Ought, oust, joust, and scour, but scourging;

Ear, but earn; and ere and tear

Do not rhyme with here but heir.

Mind the O of off and often

Which may be pronounced as orphan,

With the sound of saw and sauce;

Also soft, lost, cloth and cross.

Pudding, puddle, putting. Putting?

Yes: at golf it rhymes with shutting.

Respite, spite, consent, resent.

Liable, but Parliament.

Seven is right, but so is even,

Hyphen, roughen, nephew, Stephen,

Monkey, donkey, clerk and jerk,

Asp, grasp, wasp, demesne, cork, work.

A of valour, vapid vapour,

S of news (compare newspaper),

G of gibbet, gibbon, gist,

I of antichrist and grist,

Differ like diverse and divers,

Rivers, strivers, shivers, fivers.

Once, but nonce, toll, doll, but roll,

Polish, Polish, poll and poll.

Pronunciation– think of Psyche!–

Is a paling, stout and spiky.

Won't it make you lose your wits

Writing groats and saying 'grits'?

It's a dark abyss or tunnel

Strewn with stones like rowlock, gunwale,

Islington, and Isle of Wight,

Housewife, verdict and indict.

Don't you think so, reader, rather,

Saying lather, bather, father?

Finally, which rhymes with enough,

Though, through, bough, cough, hough, sough, tough?

Hiccough has the sound of 'cup'.

My advice is: give it up!

^† ‘Dearest Creature Susy’ is believed to reference French student Susanne Delacruix.