Our daughter decided she wanted to build a berm in our backyard to ride her bike over. I wondered how it was spelled and realized that the “er” sound in berm could take four of the five vowels. This is crazy, right? So I found myself making a few lists of rhyming words that are spelled totally differently.
pie, sky, eye, aye, sigh, I
lose, shoes, bruise, stews, hues, amuse, snooze, moos
thaw, sore, poor, thought, taught, taut, sport
term, firm, churn, worm, learn
prior, via, fire, buyer, pliers, higher, pyre, flyer, liar
snow, no, hoe, though
piece, peace, fleece, mesa, beast,
I have the kind of mind that pictures words. At school, spelling was one of my strengths. I never realised what an incredible piece of luck that was until we had kids and I had to help them with reading and spelling.
The word berm, I learned, came from Dutch via French. English is such a hotch potch.
Out of the Cave 
You have to admire people who learn to read and write English as a second language. Sometimes it seems to make no sense whatsoever. I had not heard “berm” before. What is it exactly? One of those mounds that BMX riders jump over?
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Yes, that’s right. Our daughter is suddenly interested in mountain biking and BMX style tricks. 😱☺️.
I couldn’t agree with you more about English as a foreign language. It must be so incredibly difficult.
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