3 ms·

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghoti https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghoti

• agluszak 8mo ago
  It's my go-to (pun intended) whenever a native English speaker complains about other languages being "hard to pronounce" :)
  • Koshkin 8mo ago
    To be fair, the "ghoti" joke is not about pronunciation but rather about the perceived mismatch between the way a word is written and the way it is spoken.
    • 1718627440 8mo ago
      > not about pronunciation > about [...] the way a word is written [vs.] the way it is spoken. That concept is called pronunciation.
      • Koshkin 8mo ago
        Not exactly. Pronunciation varies between dialects and accents; it is the subject of a linguistic discipline called "phonology"; writing systems or difficulties arising from their "irregularities" with respect to spoken word do not concern it. Put differently, speech and pronunciation, while related, are not the same.
  • Barrin92 8mo ago
    this is my personal favorite: https://ncf.idallen.com/english.html https://ncf.idallen.com/english.html
  • calfuris 8mo ago
    "Ghoti" is an artificial example that doesn't actually work if you account for the way positioning affects pronunciation. Pull up a list of words that start with "gh": none of them (unless "ghoti" itself is on the list) start with an /f/ sound. You'll find the same for words ending in "ti" and the /ʃ/ sound. I recommend asking people how "ough" is pronounced instead. Cough, bough, though, thought, through, thorough, hiccough--enough!