Hi Jennifer, I love your poem. It's a wonderful help in exercising pronunciation just by reference to the meter and what a beautiful illustration of the richness of the English language. Such a shame we don't know the author!
For me a rhyme of 'thorough' with 'burrow' or 'furrow' highlights the problem. I base my observations on CNN, Fox as well as Discovery and National Geographic. Australian English and I think "Standard" English would rhyme more with "burra" and 'furra". My feeling is that in attempting to do justice to the spelling of the word, some users, news readers in particular, create verbal nightmares. This could carry across into singing also where we hear undue stress on words endings. A rhyme with 'burrow' strikes me as an attempt to feel good about having accommodated the spelling of the 'ough' part of 'thorough', in which case I'd have to ask you how you pronounce 'rough'. : ) "Ruff", I hope? I'd also suggest that your particular rhyme with 'burrow' does in fact attempt to pronounce the "gh".
While we're here, the "ing" ending is another example. I feel we have all heard the two problems. One of undue emphasis and the other of a totally missing "G", but what about the other tendency of pronouncing it as "eene".
"One morning by the break of day the youthful charming Chloe.."
This line can only succeed with a present but unstressed handling of 'ing' and yet every day I hear news readers cummene and goeene as if it was the accepted form while in the next sentence we'll find a 'thu -rrou-ggh instead of 'thurra'.
Sorry but hearing about how the Electoral College represents the "more worthy voters" was just too much.
Reg.
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