They're not silent letters, they're modifiers. They modify the sound of surrounding letters. An example of a silent letter would be the P in psychology (in the English language only).
this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2024
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Because it's the ugh that provides the short vowel sound, not just the gh
u awt just spel it awt.
Most "silent" letters have some effect on the pronunciation of the word. They aren't there for no reason.
“Drive thru”
I ain’t never seen no double negative work like that before
And I ain't never seen no double negative not work like that before!
I ain’t never seen no double negative work like that before
It doesn't necessarily make a non-negative, but I'm not disliking it none.
The oddities of the English language will lead you down a strange and fascinating historical rabbit hole. It's great reading, but be ready to spend some time.
I would highly recommend the History of English Podcast. This particular observation made by OP is thoroughly covered in this particular episode: https://youtu.be/T0ED-FV7O50
tl;dr once upon a time everyone spelled words guided only by vibes, then spelling was standardised-ish, then after that there was a great vowel shift where the now standard-ish spelling became less intuitive. add the linguistic influence from French and latin (sprinkle in some germanic & a pinch of skandinavian), add the power balance between classes favouring fancier words (the nobles ate pork, beef, poultry, the peasants tended to pigs, cows, chickens). add some more stuff and there you go! a "functional" language of ~~Anglonic~~ ~~Britonic~~ English!
Also, the first printing presses that came to England were accompanied by Dutch type setters. They sometimes made spellings more Dutch (changing gost to ghost for example). They were also paid by the line, so would occasionally add unnecessary letters to words.
I remember seeing a standup comedian late 80s or early 90s refer to ghoti as an alternate spelling for fish. Just looked it up, and it dates back to the 19th century.
You take the sound gh makes in laugh, the sound of o in women, and the to from dictionary. F-I-SH.
Similar to this:
The french word for squirrel (écureuil) is equally hard for English speakers to pronounce as the English word is for French speakers
(I would also add that most English words with two R's are hard for French speakers; mirror, error and the like)
The German word for squirrel (Eichhörnchen) is hard to pronounce for French and English speakers in different ways.
Though I have to admit squirrel/écureuil is the cooler pair because it seems to me they both derive from the same root but divererged in a way to make them difficult to pronounce for the other one.
To be fair, Eichhörnchen and écureuil seem to have a similar root as well even though French is a Latin language and German is not
it's funny how I as a Ukrainian can easily clearly pronounce both English and French variants, while my language is from even a different language group :D
cough
And the "gh" are all different in "cough," "ghost," and "thought."
Consistently inconsistent. Gotta love English.
Cough bough bought rough thought though throughout.
Not a coheren sentence, just a fun time.
Coff
kof 🙃
dough
dou
The baker used the dof to make bread
They aren't silent, they make a faint gutteral sound, like the back of your tongue is being forced down. It's barely pronounced in English, but it changes the way the vowels sound. It's more present in German and Dutch languages.
For shits and giggles, I always slightly pronounce it when reading any tragedeigh names. Your daughter is named Breighleigh? Are you part Klingon?
I don't think I've ever heard it pronounced the way you're describing. I know the sound you mean. Another language that I'm learning and which is influential on place names here has it. I just don't think I've ever heard it used in the English word "ought". Which dialects of English do you have in mind?
Don't you pronounce "ought" like awt, with the back of your tongue pressed back in your mouth? Make that "ough" sound, and then a "g" sound. It should almost feel like your gagging. That tongue position is there for most words that use the "gh" phoneme. Sometimes you add an "f" sound because speakers didn't know how to make the precise sound without gagging, like "cough." That's the remnant of the abandoned glottal fricative.
Ok now be honest, have you been sitting by yourself making "awgh" sounds? Gold star if you felt like vomiting at some point.
For me it's just a vowel sound and a T consonant on the end, the tongue isn't closing the airway enough to approach a consonant on the vowel sound. The restriction is at the back of the mouth, but it certainly doesn't feel like gagging
A glottal fricative is the consonant at the start of "happy" or "hello". The gh I'm thinking of is a voiced velar fricative. The voiced counterpart to the ch in Scottish English "loch" or the German "Buch"
Ok now be honest, have you been sitting by yourself making "awgh" sounds?
Well of course! Few things make me so grateful to live alone as any time I'm trying to figure out the specifics of how I say a thing
🎵Why is the plural of mouse mice, but we can't live in semi-detatched hice?🎵
We could if we had multiple spice
You’re only permitted to have one primary address. If you want a second address you’ll have to call support.
We could have if things were a little different. I'm not sure about Old Norse nor Old English, but Modern German does change Haus to Häuser (that äu is pronounced kinda like 'oi') and presumably it was quite similar in (at least some varieties of) Old English.
ough has something like 8 different pronunciations in English. Good luck!~
Enough rhymes with buff Through with do Thorough with... Actually very little in my accent. Burqa, maybe? The last syllable has a schwa vowel for me Plough with cow Though with crow Hiccough with cup Trough with scoff Hough with frock
(for me)
Depending on where you live, thorough is pronounced “thur-oh” and hiccough is spelled “hiccup”.
Ahh, yes! I had meant to add something like "in my English" but then I get so thrown off by bei g unable to think of a rhyme for "thorough" that I forgot
Here's a fun (related) one. I don't know to whom to attribute it. I got it from a colleague in grad school.
Ghoti
What does it spell? The English spelling system is so screwy, you can make a decent case that it spells "fish".
Gh -- from enough (f)
o -- from women (i)
ti -- from nation (sh)
Edit: spacing and one addition
I'm glad I checked Wikipedia before just talking out my ass, as the attribution is less clear than I thought, but the first I heard of this was in Phish circles back in the 90s!
Yeah, that's why I was remiss to give an attribution.
I’m sure that’s a regional way to pronounce it. I’ve lived in the south (North Carolina) my whole life and I’ve always heard and pronounced it as the same sound as caught, or aught.
In fact, according to The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, both aught and ought have the same pronunciation.
Weird. It may sound subtle ( another weird word), but my mouth is definitely doing different things. Ought has a definite diphthong whereas aught may have one, but much more slight and with a more closed mouth.
Languages are weird.
Edit: aught is likely grown out of naught! I mean, that obviously makes sense, just never actually thought about it.
They’re saying ought is pronounced aught, not out, even though the gh is silent. If the g h was just silent then ought and out would be pronounced the same, so clearly the silent letters are doing something else