Ryder Cup Terminology 2014

If you're gonna call the morning matches "four-ball," then you can't call the afternoon matches "Foursomes," you should call them "two-ball". There are always gonna be four players playing together on Friday and Saturday, so neither "four-ball," nor "foursomes" makes good sense. Why not call them exactly what they are? All four players are playing their own ball in the morning, and the BEST player's BALL for each pair - wins the hole, so call it "Best Ball". In the afternoon, each pair alternates strokes on ONE BALL, and that is called "Alternate Shot".

Accents

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When English Teachers Retire

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Not a Typo

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English Pronunciation

If you can pronounce correctly every word in this poem, you will be speaking English better than 90% of the native English speakers in the world.

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.)
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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!!!

~ English Pronunciation by G. Nolst Trenité

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Or If you'd rather listen to it, you can click HERE..

C'Mon Man

Was it bothering anyone else that the Monday Night Football announcers for the San Diego/Kansas City game kept pronouncing Ryan Succop's name as "Ryan Suck-Up"??

I mean get with the program everyone.. How do you pronounce the name Philip (or Phillip)?

It's " `Fill - ǝp" That's an upside down 'e' and it's called a "schwa". It denotes a neutral pronunciation sound, which is present in thousands of English words, as a part of the NON-STRESSED syllable of 2-syllable words.

Same thing with syrup.

You don't say "Sear Up"... nor do you say "Phil Up." The accents are on the 1st syllables. `Sear-ǝp AND `Phil-ǝp

`Suck-ǝp

Everyone try it now..


Thank you. /End rant

Alex & Liam Do WalMart

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This Is Exactly Why English Grammar Class Was So Important

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Come On, English

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Let's Get This Straight Once And For All

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If You're Gonna Err, May As Well Err Badly!

Thanks Christy!

English Is Crazy

You think English is easy??? Check this out!

1) The bandage was wound around the wound.

2) The farm was used to produce produce.

3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.

4) We must polish the Polish furniture.

5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.

6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.

7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.

8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.

9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.

10) I did not object to the object.

11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.

12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.

13) They were too close to the door to close it.

14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.

15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.

16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.

17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.

18) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.

19) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.

20) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?


Let's face it - English is a crazy language!

There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple.

English muffins weren't invented in England nor French Fries in France.

Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat.

We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square, and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce, and hammers don't ham?

If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth, beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices? Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends, and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?

If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?

Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell?

How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites?

You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out, and in which an alarm goes off by going on.

English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all. That is why when the stars are out they are visible, but when the lights are out they are not visible.

And why doesn't 'Buick' rhyme with 'quick'?


You lovers of the English language are also gonna love this:

There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that is 'UP'.

It's easy to understand UP, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP? At a meeting, why does a topic come UP? Why do we speak UP, why are the officers UP for election, and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report?

We call UP our friends. And we use it to brighten UP a room, and polish UP the silver. We warm UP the leftovers, and clean UP the kitchen. We lock UP the house, and some guys fix UP the old car.

At other times the little word has really special meaning: People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses. To be dressed is one thing, but to be dressed UP is special.

And this UP is confusing: A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP. And we open UP a store in the morning, but we close it UP at night.

We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP! To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP, look the word UP in the dictionary. In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost one-quarter of the page, and can add UP to about thirty definitions. If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used. It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don't give UP, you may wind UP with a hundred or more.

When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP. Then when the sun comes out, we say it is clearing UP! When it rains, it wets the earth and often messes things UP.
When is doesn't rain for awhile, things dry UP.

One could go on and on, but I'll wrap it UP, for now my time is UP, so... it is now time to shut UP!

Oh… one more thing:

What is the first thing you do in the morning & the last thing you do at night? U-P!

Thanks Mom!

Image Sources: 1, 2, 3

Mastering English

I take it you already know,
Of tough and bough and cough and dough.

Others may stumble, but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, laugh and through.

Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps.

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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 and thwart and cart –
Come, come, I’ve hardly made a start!

A dreadful language? Why man alive!
I’d mastered it when I was five.

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Japanese Tongue Twister

1 - Go to Google Translator (click the above image).

2 - Type in "how much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood" (or copy that and paste it).

3 - Change the option so that it translates it from English to Japanese.

4 - Copy what it gives you as the result, and paste it back into the translate area.

5 - Change the option to translate it from Japanese back to English.

6 - Laugh at the result.

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That's Why You Work At A Gas Station

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Yep, punctuation aside, I count at least SIX.

The Importance Of Punctuation

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A Quick English Lesson

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Masters Degree FAIL

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SchizoEnglish

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