Ghoti

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This article is about spelling irregularities in English. For people of western Bengal, see Ghotis.
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Ghoti is a constructed example word used to illustrate irregularities in English spelling. It is pronounced /fɪʃ/, just like fish:

  • gh, /f/ as in laugh, /læf, læːf, laːf/;
  • o, /ɪ/ as in women, /ˈwɪmɪn, ˈwɪmən/; and
  • ti, /ʃ/ as in nation, /ˈneɪʃən/.

Ghoti is often cited to support English spelling reform, and is often attributed to George Bernard Shaw[1], who supported this cause, but it is unlikely to have originated with him. [2]

Others argue that this ignores etymology and the normal rules of English spelling. The grapheme "gh" never represents the phoneme /f/ at the beginning of a word and "ti" never represents /ʃ/ at the end of a word. The pronunciation of the word women is the only word in English where o represents the sound /ɪ/ and this is partly due to the Great Vowel Shift.

Another interpretation of the pronunciation of ghoti which has been put forward is "..." (that is, no sound; silence): gh as in night; o as in people; t as in ballet; i as in business. [3]

Contents

[edit] Additional Examples of Irregularities

The example of ghoti is only one of many possible illustrations of irregularity in English spelling. More are illustrated below:

'Potato'

If gh is pronounced /p/ in Hiccough...
If ough is pronounced /o/ in Dough...
If phth is pronounced /t/ in Phthisis...
If eigh is pronounced /eɪ/ in Neighbour...
If tte is pronounced /t/ in Gazette...
If eau is pronounced /o/ in Plateau...
...then it should be possible to spell potato as ghoughphtheightteeau.

Note, however, that hiccough is more usually spelled hiccup [4], and most people pronounce the <phth> in phthisis as /fθ/.

'Ship'

If ti is pronounced /ʃ/ in Nation...
If o is pronounced /ɪ/ in Women...
If gh is pronounced /p/ in Hiccough...
...then it should be possible to spell ship as tiogh.

[edit] Purpose of Irregularities

It has been argued[citation needed] that these examples in fact illustrate a lack of irregularity in English spelling — ghoughphtheightteeau would be a ridiculous way to spell potato, and in English, potato isn't spelled even close to that way. Because of this, it is claimed that the rules of English spelling, which prohibit the formation of words like ghoti, are in fact relatively sensible.

It has also been noted[citation needed] that many of the irregularities that do exist in English spelling serve to preserve the word's history and etymology. For example, the word "electrician", in which the ci is pronounced /ʃ/ due to palatalization, retains a linkage to its root "electricity" which would be lost if the different forms of the word were spelled "electrishun", "electrisity", and "electrik".

The /ʃ/ sound itself is a good example of spelling irregularity. In Imagery and text: A dual coding theory of reading and writing (Lawrence Erlbaum, 2001), Mark Sadoski lists eleven ways of spelling /ʃ/: shirt, sugar, chute, action, issue, ocean, conscious, mansion, schwa, anxious, and special.

[edit] See also

[edit] Trivia

In the fictional Klingon language, ghotI' is the word for fish. [5]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Holroyd, Michael, Bernard Shaw: Volume III: 1918-1950: The Lure of Fantasy, Random House, 1994, ISBN 0-517-13035-1
  2. ^ See Jim Scobbie's article at alt-usage-english.org
  3. ^ For similar interpretations, see the alphabet of American linguist John Higgins
  4. ^ Relative occurrences of hiccup and hiccough on web pages indexed by Google
  5. ^ Klingon Language Institute

[edit] External links

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