On one point students of English all agree: English pronunciation and usage are complicated, irregular and frequently confusing. This book, an exhaustive compilation of linguistic curiosities, list: Words that rhyme although their spelling is quite different (e.g. ache/lake, blood/mud, ferry/bury), words of similar derivation but with different meanings (e.g. official/officer, effective/efficient), homophones, i.e. words of similar pronunciation but of different meaning (e.g. affect/effect), homographs, i.e. words which are written the same way but which have different pronunciation and meanings (e.g. bow, the front part of a ship, and bow, to bend over), homonyms, i.e. words whose spelling and pronunciation are identical but whose meanings differ /e.g. bark, the noise made by a dog, and bark, the shell of a tree), useful collective nouns (e.g. a herd of cattle, a horde of savages, a pack of wolves), plurals of compound nouns (e.g. father-in-law/fathers-in-law, manservant/menservants), common jobs, Use of on, in and at and other troublesome prepositions, rules for the pronunciation of regulars verbs (when-ed may be pronounced as-d, -ed or-t), examples distinguishing between the use of make an do, verbs that double the final consonant in the past and present participles, indispensable everyday idioms.
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