English is a Pain! (Pane?)
by Shirlee Curlee Bingham
Rain, reign, rein.
English is a pain.
Although the words
sound just alike,
the spelling's not the same!
Bee, be, B,
I'd rather climb a tree.
than learn to spell
the same old word,
not just one way, but three!
Sight, site, cite,
I try with all my might,
No matter which
I finally choose,
it's not the one that's right!
There, their, they're,
enough to make you swear.
Too many ways
to write one sound,
I just don't think it's fair!
To, two, too,
so what's a kid to do?
I think I'll go
to live on Mars,
and leave this mess with ewe!
(you?)
A Bad Case of the Giggles: Kids' Favorite Funny Poems, selected by Bruce Lansky, Meadowbrook Press, 1994.
I spend a big chunk of each day of the pandemic with my 7-year old granddaughter teaching and learning and we both agree...English can be a pain! The vowels insist on making more than one sound or maybe no sound at all when they are paired with another vowel (why are they even there you could ask...). Even the consonants can turn on you and make hard sounds or soft sounds or no sound at all--"g" and "h" are famous for that when they snuggle up together and "k" likes to let "n" do the talking when they march at the head of a word. I just all you can do is giggle and use spellcheck!
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