I take it vou already
know
Of tough and bough
and cough and dough?
Others may stumble,
but not you,
On hiccough, thorough,
lough and through.
Well done! And now
you may wish perhaps
To learn of less familiar
traps?
Beware of heard, a
dreadful word
Thats 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 close
and rose and lose -
Just look them up
- and goose and choose.
And core 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?
Man alive.
l'd mastered it when
I was five!