Ghoti

It is believed the great George Bernard Shaw (above; 1856-1950) came up with “ghoti” as an alternative spelling for “fish.”  The GH represents the sound at the end of the word “tough”, the middle O is pronounced as in “women” and the TH as in “staTIon”.  He was making a point about the vagaries and complexities of English spelling.  English pronounciation is relatively difficult to predict from English spelling, giving English, in the technical jargon, a deep orthography.

It’s dfficult to see how all the English-speaking countries would ever agree amongst themselves on how to reform spelling, even if they thought it to be a good idea.

Check out our upcoming English courses or indeed our courses for other languages with easier spellings.

Enjoy this classic poem by Gerard Noist Trenité:

I take it you already know
I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, lough and through?
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps?
Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird,
And dead: it’s said like bed, not bead –
For goodness sake don’t call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt).

A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, broth in brother,
And here is not a match for there
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear,
And then there’s dose and rose and lose –
Just look them up – and goose and choose,
And cork and work and card and ward,
And font and front and word and sword,
And do and go and thwart and cart –
Come, come, I’ve hardly made a start!
A dreadful language? Man alive!
I’d mastered it when I was five!

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