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57 sats \ 2 replies \ @cryotosensei 7 Mar \ on: Stacker Saloon
Did you know that -ough makes the ‘aw’ sound? That’s why we can call Doughnuts as Donuts 🍩 It’s like a light bulb lit in my mind. 💡
I learnt this when teaching my students about the different pronunciations of -ough!
Subsequently, I learnt that
a fun word (name) to confuse people is Loughborough since it is pronounced as luffbuhruh
-ough is indeed a complex English word going back past Middle English (Chaucer) to Old English (Beowulf - closer to German than modern English) and -ough continues to evolve. I would have trouble thinking of a more difficult example of phonetic differentiations mapped to the same English suffix. Here is the expanded list of wildly different pronunciations of -ough:
- Though
- Through
- Thorough
- Rough
- Plough
- Cough
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You are brightening my evening! I’m sorry I don’t have enough sats to zap all your knowledge drops!
From my Word document: Rules for spelling and pronouncing English vocabulary often go out the window due to an amalgamation of roots in Germanic and Latin languages — “ough” in English has at least six different pronunciations depending on the word! (Try saying “tough,” “through,” “plough,” “cough,” “dough” and “fought” in a row)
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