| I know it's for fun, but the whole ghoti thing always bugged me. The phonetics of English letter clusters are context-sensitive. "Gh" sounds like "f" only in "ough" or "augh" clusters, so it's not that "gh" can be read as "f"; it's that "ough" can be read as "off" or "uff". Likewise, "ti" only sounds like "sh" in the context of words with Latinate suffixes (like differentiate or intention). It would never sounds like "sh" at the end of a word, nor would "gh" sound like "f" at the beginning of one. Again, I know it's for laughs, but I always thought that the "ghoti" joke made a straw man of English spelling. Okay, /grinch. |
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