English is weird. It can be understood through tough thorough thought, though.
this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2024
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How many ways can "ough" be pronounced in English?
through - oo
tough - uff
though - oh
thought - ah
cough - off
bough - ow
Any others?
thought - ah
?
thought - or; if you pronounce it the UK/Aus/NZ way
thought - o; if you pronounce it with a general American accent
As for others:
- thorough - uh (schwa)
- hiccough - up
Would phoneticizing it as “aw” help? American English pronounces “thought” as if you added a t to ‘thaw’
Saying it’s “o” makes it sound like you mean it to be pronounced “oh”
As far as Latin alphabet approximates, I'd say "aw" is pretty perfect. Because I think most accents will pronounce "thought" as if you add a t to "thaw". It's just that what that means in terms of the actual articulation varies a lot.
So, Americans with the cot-caught merger will pronounce it with the "cot" vowel, which is what I was trying to get across. UK/Aus/NZ don't all pronounce it the same as each other, but do for the most part pronounce it with the same vowel as they would use for the word "or". And "thaw", in our non-rhotic accents, is the same as Thor.
So "aw" works either way. Nice find!
Pretty sure "caught" won and "cot" lost in the caught-cot merger. I don't think most Americans would conceive of it as an "o" sound
When I hear an American with the caught/cot merger say "caught", it sounds way more similar to my (unmerged) "cot" than my "caught"
I believe you. I meant more that it "won" conceptually than phonetically. To an American ear it sounds more like "aw" or "ah" than "o".
Oh yeah, maybe. I don't really know how you'd measure that.
I'm referring to American English specifically. "o" would make me think it's pronounced "thoat", but it's the sound I meant.
"thorough" rhymes with "oh" in Standard American English.
"Hiccough" is a good one. I always hated that spelling and prefer "hiccup" for that reason.
"Hiccough" is a good one. I always hated that spelling and prefer "hiccup" for that reason.
TIL those are both pronounced the same way. (Gaol/jail is worse, though.)
Yeah o on its own is definitely unclear. I meant o as in "cot". (As in the American cot-caught merger.)
I feel "ah" would be a better shorthand for the vowel in "palm" or "bra", or "car" in non-rhotic accents.
Yes, English is weird, but this word still breaks rules. "Gh" (pronounced "f") is never at the beginning of a word, and "ti" (pronounced "sh") is never at the end.
Oh, you’re absolutely correct. I think it’s just meant to poke fun at the complexity of the language.
A very relevant poem, The Chaos by Dutch writer Gerard Nolst Trenité https://ncf.idallen.com/english.html
Fun fact: Ghoti is a (sort of) derogatory term for people with ancestry from West Bengal (a state in India) used by people with ancestry from Bangladesh. (Sort of, because no one really considers it offensive. The modern use is usually limited to signifying cultural differences.)
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ghoti my love