How Can One Learn Anguish? ☚
1. Read everything in this text aloud, and preferably in a group. Make a game of it.
You’ll find it easier to understand Anguish when you hear it than when you see it. If you have trouble, listen to someone else read it to you, preferably someone who doesn’t quite know what he’s reading. This often gives the best effect. Watch what happens when the listeners understand better than the reader.
2. Don’t try to read too fast and be sure to give all words their usual English pronunciation, regardless of the new meaning the word has acquired. An accurate pronunciation and good intonation are most effective.
3. Don’t worry if you seem to have suddenly acquired a slight accent; your friends will tell you that this is most attractive.
[1] The members of SPAL are the persons who have written to the author concerning the Anguish Languish, especially the thousands who wrote to request copies of LADLE RAT ROTTEN HUT after Arthur Godfrey’s inimitable reading of it, on his television show. The society is very poorly organized, in fact few of the members even know they belong. There are no officers, no meetings, no convention, and, worst of all, from the point of view of the author and founder, no dues.
[2] This isn’t his real name, nor is it intended to be the name of any other Anguish Languish professor, living or dead.
[3] Whether or not such a calamity is likely to occur seems entirely beside the point; in times like these one should be prepared for any emergency.
[4] ANGUISH ANONYMOUS, an organization of former dialect story tellers, sponsored by SPAL, can be called in difficult cases.
[5] The plural of xyster in Anguish, is cisterns. See, in this book, the story of Center Alley.
[6] A research psychologist plans to use Anguish Languish to provide data for a study entitled: “Individual and Sex Differences in Configurational Perception of Artificially Contrived but Phenomenologically Comprehensible Auditory Stimuli.” This sounds as if it should mean something.
The first item in this collection is a story familiar to all readers—LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD. Or, as you can probably say now in Anguish, LADLE RAT ROTTEN HUT.
Heresy ladle furry starry toiling udder warts—warts welcher altar girdle deferent firmer once inner regional virgin. This sentence means: “Here is a little fairy story told in other words—words which are altogether different from the ones in the original version.”
ORIOLE RATTY? DEN LESS GAT STUTTERED!