One of the most memorable poems I was required to learn and recite in Form 3 (Year 9) English is the simplest example of how complex the English language is. The poem highlights that pronunciation is not as simple as rhyming two words that are almost identical in spelling...although, this is our approach when teaching children to read.

English is difficult for those of us born in to the language, let alone those brave enough to embark on learning it as a second language later in life!

Unfortunately, the author of the poem remains unknown.

I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you
On hiccough, thorough, slough and through?
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps
To learn of less familiar traps?

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.
And 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, then thwart and cart.
Come, come, I've hardly made a start.

A dreadful language? Why, man alive,
I'd learned to talk it when I was five,
And yet to write it, the more I tried,
I hadn't learned it at fifty-five!