The Longest Now

Concordant Chaos: the tricky tongue-twister by Gerard Trenité

Dearest Creature in Creation v1.01

This is a synthesis of variants of a delicious spelling poem, titled variously “The Chaos” and “Dearest creature in creation“, by Gerard Nolst Trenité (1870-1946). It was revised often by the author, with no clear final version. Trenité collected interesting words and would fit them in over the years; first into a line or couplet, then fitting that into a verse, then changing its order as part of the whole. Filler text (connecting the tricky words into paragraphs) was often changed.

I started with the English Spelling Society version from 1994 (it went offline in 2013; glad to have archived it), and incorporated bits from other versions, to include as many of his examples as possible. See also the 1920 version from “Drop Your Foreign Accent“, on Wikisource.

The result is split into four sections, with highlights and line numbers. Most versions agreed up to verse 18 and closed with the stanzas in C. Later versions added sections A and B with flexible order and composition.

Lines in each stanza should rhyme exactly.
Sequential similarly-spelled italicized words should not.
Prepare your tongue, and read it out loud!

Updates

• C. Scott encoded this poem in a khipu conlang. I am studding-sailed.
• Oct 2012: Suggestions incorporated, thanks to pointers to other versions.
• May 2015: Removed ‘Psyche’ filler lines, leaving two long stanzas in C.
• Mar 2017: Minor scansion changes, notes.  Removed confusing parts of A + B with mainly British names + archaic pronunciations.
• 1.0: Major rev. Reduced C to the final stanzas, moved the rest to B. The core poem is the first 18 verses + C. Changed order of A + B after seeing more versions, noted more word variants. Cleaned underlined text.
• 1.01: Notes, format, bold + final line #s.  Noted more British variants.

Key
Italics    –  Words whose pronunciation and spelling are contrasted.
Bold      –  Archaic, British variant, or varies by dialect. Worth a double-check.
Bold letters in an unbolded word are articulated.   
<!–  –>   –  Pronunciation guide for a nearby bold word.
Underline – filler text that varies by version & doesn’t quite fit

The Chaos
Gerard Nolst Trenité⁺

₁
Dearest creature in creation
Learning 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;
Queer, fair seer, hear my prayer.

₂
Pray, console your loving poet,
Make my coat look new, dear, sew it!                  10
Just compare heart, hear 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.

₃
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as vague and ague,
But be careful how you speak,
Say: gush, bush, steak, streak, break, bleak,      20

Previous, precious, fuchsia, via,
Recipe, pipe, studding-sail, choir;
Woven, oven, how and low,             <!– stunsull –>
Script, receipt, shoe, poem, toe.

₄
Hear me say, devoid of trickery:
Daughter, laughter and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, reviles.                      <!– tossulls –>

Wholly, holly, signal, signing,
And examining, but mining,                                 30
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far.

₅
Lumber, plumber, bier, but brier,
Admirable, desirable; admire, desire.  <!– brome –>
Topsham, brougham, renown, but known,
Knowledge, done, lone, gone, none, tone.

One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel.
Gertrude, German, wind and wind
Beau, queue, kindred, but mankind.                    40

₆
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?

₇
Billet does not end like ballet;
Wallet, mallet; bouquet, chalet.                           50
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.

Banquet is not nearly parquet,
Which exactly rhymes with khaki.
Discount, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward,

₈
Ricocheted, crocheting, croquet?
Right! Your pronunciation’s OK.
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.                           60

Is your r correct in higher?
Keats says it rhymes with Thalia.
Hugh but hug, and hood but hoot,
Buoyant, minute, but minute.

₉
Say abscission with precision,
then position and transition.
Corral, rally, rhythm, rhyme,
Diaphragm, stigma, paradigm.

Twopence, threepence.  Tease is easy,
But lease, please, cease, grease and greasy?    70
Cornice, nice, valise, revise,           
Bier, rabies, lullabies.

₁₀
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
Sounds not like Czech or chic, but ache.             80

₁₁
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.        <!– britches –>
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice.

₁₂
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.                                      90
Petal, penal, and canal,
Wait, surmise, plait, promise, pal,

Suit, suite, ruin.   Circuit, conduit
Rhyme with “shirk it” and “beyond it“.
And it can be hard to spell               <!– pell mell –>
When we say pall, mall, but Pall Mall.

₁₃
Muscle, muscular, gaol, iron,
Timber, climber, bullion, lion,
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.                                  100

Ivy, privy, famous.   Clamour
Has the a of drachm and hammer.   <!– dram –>
Pussy, hussy and possess,
Desert, but desert, dross, address.

₁₄
Golf, wolf, countenance, lieutenants.
Hoist, in lieu of flags, left pennants.
Courier, courtier, tomb, bomb, comb,
Cow, but Cowper, some and home.   <!–  Kyper –>

Solder, soldier. “Blood is thicker“,
Some say, “than liqueur or liquor“,                       110
Making, it is sad but true,
Of bravado, much ado.

₁₅
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.                  <!– guzberry –>
Gooseberry, goose, and close, but close,
Paradise, rise, rose, and dose.                           120

₁₆
Say inveigh, neigh, but inveigle —
Make the latter rhyme with eagle.
Mind: meandering but mean,
Valentine and magazine.

And I’ll bet a pretty penny,
You say mani-(fold) like many,
Which is wrong. Say rapier, pier,
Tier (one who ties), but tier.

₁₇
Arch, archangel.   Pray, does erring
Rhyme with herring or with stirring?                   130
Prison, bison, treasure trove,
Treason, hover, cover, cove.

Perseverance, severance. Ribald
Rhymes (unlike piebald) with nibbled.
Phaeton, paean, gnat, ghat, gnaw,
Psychic, lien, shone, bone, pshaw!

₁₈
Don’t be down, my own, but rough it,
And distinguish buffet, buffet;
Brood, stood, roof, rook, school, wool, boon,
Worcester, Boleyn, to impugn.    <!– bullin –>   140

Say in sounds correct and sterling:
Hearse, hear, hearken, year and yearling.
Evil, devil, mezzotint,                           <!– metzo –>
Mind the z! (A gentle hint.)

_A1
Now recite in accent pure:
Nature, stature and mature.
Pious, impious, limb, climb, glumly,
Worsted, worsted, crumbly, dumbly, <!– woosted –>

Conquer, conquest, vase, phase, fan,
Wan, sedan and artisan.                                     150
The TH will surely trouble you
More than R, CH or W.

_A2
Say then these phonetic gems:
Thomas, thyme, Theresa, Thames.
Thompson, Chatham, Waltham, Streatham,
There are more but I forget ’em.

Shoes, goes, does.  Singer but finger,
ginger, lingerie and linger.
Real and zeal; mauve, gauze and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, age.                           160

_A3
Hero, heron, query, very           <!– queery –>
Parry, tarry, fury, bury,
Dost, lost, post, and doth, cloth, loth.
job, Job, blossom, bosom, oath.

Though the difference seems little,
We say actual, but victual.
Seat, sweat; chaste, caste; Leigh, eight, height,
Put, nut; granite, and unite.

_A4
Reefer does not rhyme with deafer,
Feoffer does, and zephyr, heifer.                        170
Dull, bull, Geoffrey, George, ate, late.   <!– et –>
Hint, pint, senate, but sedate.

Gaelic, Arabic, pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.
Tour, but our, dour, succour, four,
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.

_A5
Say manoeuvre, yacht and vomit,
Next omit, which differs from it.
Bona fide, alibi,
Gyrate, dowry and awry.                                     180

Sea, idea, guinea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean,
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.

_A6
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion with battalion,
Rally, ally; yea and ye.
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, key, quay!

Say aver, but ever, fever.
Neither, leisure, skein, receiver.                         190
Never guess! — it is not safe:
We say calves, valves, half, but Ralf.

_A7
Starry, granary, canary,
Crevice, but device, and eyrie,
Face, but preface, then grimace,
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.  <!– glahs –>

Large but target; gin, give, verging,
Ought, oust, joust, and scour, but scourging.
Ear, hear, earn;  but ere and bear
Do not rhyme with here but heir.                        200

_B1
Now try trivial and vial,
Tripod, menial, denial,
Troll and trolley, realm and ream,
Schedule, mischief, schism, scheme.

Zeus, Thebes, Thales, Aphrodite,
Paramour, enamoured: flighty.
Episodes, antipodes;
Acquiesce, and obsequies.

_B2
Pudding, puddle, putting.  Putting?
Yes: at golf it rhymes with shutting.                    210
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, torque, cork, and work.

_B3
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;                           220

A of valour, vapid, vapour;
S of news and of newspaper;
G of gibbet, gibbon, gist;          <!– dj –>
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.

_C
Pronunciation is a tunnel
Strewn with stones like solace, gunwale,          230
Islington and Isle of Wight;
Housewife; verdict and indict.               <!– husif –>

Don’t you think so, reader, rather —
Saying lather, bather, father —
Won’t it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying ‘grits’?

₊
Finally, which rhymes with enough:
Though, through, bough, cough, hough, sough, tough‽
Hiccough has the sound of ‘sup’…
My advice is:  ¡ Give it up !                                  240