Saturday, May 5, 2007

Why English Is One of the Most Difficult Languages to Learn…

TASK 1: Just try reading these sentences yourself out loud! I'll bet you can't read them all perfectly the first time through! Now ask someone whose English you think is better than yours.

TASK 2: Paste 5 sentences at a time into something this free online text-to-speech engine (there is a 300 character limit) and see how many the computer gets right.
Do you hear any mispronunciations or is this a very clever computer?

We polish Polish furniture.
He could lead if he got the lead out.
A farm can produce produce.
The dump was so full, it had to refuse refuse.
The soldier decided to desert in the desert.
The present is a good time to present the present.
At the Army base, a bass was painted on a bass drum.
A dove dove into the bushes.
I didn’t object to the object.
The insurance for the invalid was invalid.
The bandage was wound around the wound.
There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
The two were too close to the door to close it.
The buck does funny things when does are present.
They sent a sewer down to stitch a tear in the sewer line.
To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
After a number of Novocain injections, my lips got number.
I shed a tear over a tear in my shirt.
I had to subject the subject to a number of tests.
How can I intimate this to my most intimate friends?
I spent last evening evening out a pile of dirt.

OK I finally got scribd.com to upload these sentences so I could hear them read by the computer.
Listen!

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