Pronunciation of the Trough

[NCBull]

I was just looking at the title of this forum and contemplating how complicated the English language is. There must be a steep learning curve for non-native speakers; more so than many others. The -ough ending is particularly peculiar.

Trough is pronounced "trawf".

Remove the first letter and it changes to "ruff".

Change the first letter and it could become "boh", "cawf", "doh", or "tuff". Or add another letter and it could be "plow".

Swap a letter to the back and it "awt" to sound much different.

Not to be a bor, but "burrow" is especially unique. You can even customize it to "burah" with no confusion.

Then there's "threw", so commonly used. "Tho" you probably already knew that.

Alright, that's "enuff" already.

[charsibb]

Back in the day, a comic (think it was Gallagher) did a pretty good routine on the word GHOTI, saying it was pronounced fish.

 

GH comes from trough

O comes from women

TI comes from solution

 

Ergo, FISH.