This is a fun poem about the chaos of the English language, but you’ll want to pull your hair out in frustration by the end of it! Don’t worry about understanding the poem – there is no meaning! It’s just a huge collection of ridiculous irregularities in English spelling! Most native speakers would have difficulty pronouncing all these words, so don’t worry if you find it difficult.

Here is what the author wrote about this poem in his book:

After you watch the video, tell me in the comments below if you were surprised by the pronunciation of any of the words!

The only person who can pronounce this poem perfectly is the author himself. I have tried my best to pronounce each word using American pronunciation. However, this poem was meant to be read with a British accent, so some of the words don’t rhyme with an American accent! Also, some of these words are old and are no longer used. I had to do a lot of research to find the correct pronunciation of many of these words. (I learned a lot of new words!) I primarily used the Merriam-Webster dictionary to check my pronunciation. However, there are many words with more than one pronunciation (bade, via, clangour, mauve, plait, wont, aye, topsail, neither, leisure, hygienic, Boleyn, groats, tarry, parry, Gaelic, grimace, hough, does), so I chose the best pronunciation to suit the poem.

There are many different versions of this poem. This poem was first published as an appendix to the book Drop Your Foreign Accent by Gerard Nolst Trenité. It was a book of pronunciation exercises for students learning British pronunciation. The book was first published in 1909. “The Chaos” first appeared in the 1920 edition. With each successive edition of the book, the poem was expanded. The most complete version can be found on the website of The English Spelling Society. That version is 274 lines!

I was able to find the 1932 edition of the book at the Metro Toronto Reference Library (you can see photocopies of it below). This is the version of the poem I chose to read.

Yes, I cut out large parts of the poem. There are a lot of old words and names of places in England that I have never heard and can’t pronounce. This poem goes on for 8 pages and almost 250 lines … people would get bored if I read the whole thing! I kept what I thought were the most interesting parts, and also the parts that were closest to the most famous version of this poem.