Texts for Practicing Pronunciation

Betty Botter

Betty Botter had some butter,
“But,” she said, “this butter’s bitter.
If I bake this bitter butter,
it would make my batter bitter.
But a bit of better butter—
that would make my batter better.”
So she bought a bit of butter,
better than her bitter butter,
and she baked it in her batter,
and the batter was not bitter.
So ’twas better Betty Botter
bought a bit of better butter.

Melody of Language                      

To appreciate the prosody of the English Language—that is, its melody and flow of speech—, it sometimes helps to read poetry, since many pronunciation patterns in poetry are more or less predetermined by meter and rhyme. More importantly, there is nothing more melodious than poetry—apart from singing, which I’m afraid we won’t do.

Sonnet XVIII
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
  So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
  So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

“She Walks in Beauty”

She walks in beauty, like the night
 Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
 Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow’d to that tender light
 Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
 Had half impair’d the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
 Or softly lightens o’er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
 How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.
And on that cheek and o’er the brow,
 So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
 But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
 A heart whose love is innocent.

George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788–1824)

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