Wednesday, November 09, 2011

A quick break

ghoti

NaNo aside, I thought I'd give you something a little different this morning, though a lot of you might know it. Can you read that word above? It demonstrates one of the challenges that people learning English can face.

Think gh as in 'enough', o as in 'women' and ti as in 'nation'.  And what do you get?

6 comments:

snafu said...

Funny you should mention that, I was writing about ghoti yesterday, explaining how a poster joke had worked. Interestingly when my sons were small they had a BBC computer and the text to speech processor, to their delight, pronounced ghoti as fish.

Sandra Davies said...

This was a lesson I used to amuse my children with too ...

Paula RC said...

Okay, you lost me, but then I'm dyslexia. I read words by memorizing how they are pronounced so it hard for me to learn new words by breaking them up into sound. I have to get my husband to read words out if I can't remember how to pronounce. If I come across a new word I don't know he has to tell me how it is pronounced so I came memorize them.
When he's not about I've a dictionary on my computer which speaks to me.

I love learning about words and their history.

Akelamalu said...

Oh the joys of the English language eh?

anthonynorth said...

I call English the magpie language -every word taken from somewhere else. that's why it's so successful.

Hilary Melton-Butcher said...

Hi AJ .. I wrote about this in July 2010 when my mother couldn't hear -fortunately it returned - except ever since she can't remember whether she's talking or silently talking ..?!

I added:
However Bingham goes on to say .. that if we eat fish, we eat chips too and potato could be ...
ready for it? ghoughbteighpteau ...... as in:

P gh as in hiccough
O ough as in though
T bt as in debt
A eigh as in neighbour
T pt as in pterodactyl
O eau as in bureau

It is fascinating our language .. especially mixed up like this!

Cheers enjoy the weekend .. Hilary