Here's a neat (rhyming) poem for those learning English (or think they already know everything they need to know), found on <a href="http://bogieworks.blogs.com/treppenwitz/2008/02/i-often-find-my.html" source="Treppenwitz" author="David Bogner">I thought I had it ruff, er rough!</a><fn> <bq align="center" caption="Hints on pronunciation for foreigners" author="T.S.W.">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? 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 barely made a start! A dreadful language? Man alive! I’d mastered it when I was five!</bq> With pronunciation out of the way, here's a poem from the comments on the same article, covering homophones and spell-checkers. <bq align="center" author="Margo Roark">Eye halve a spelling checker It came with my pea sea It plainly marques for my revue Miss steaks eye kin knot sea. Eye strike a key and type a word And weight four it to say Weather eye am wrong oar write It shows me strait a weigh. As soon as a mist ache is maid It nose bee fore two long And eye can put the error rite It's rare lea ever wrong. Eye have run this poem threw it Eye am shore your pleased two no It's letter perfect awl the weigh My checker tolled me sew.</bq> <hr> <ft>It's quoted here in its entirety because the original blog article notes that it was lifted a 1965 issue of the London Sunday Times by an anonymous contributor.</ft>