At least in my dialect/accent of English
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
AnglonicBritonicEnglish!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.
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)
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.”
Cough bough bought rough thought though throughout.
Not a coheren sentence, just a fun time.
Consistently inconsistent. Gotta love English.
Coff
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?
🎵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.
Because it’s the ugh that provides the short vowel sound, not just the gh
Do you want ought? - Do you want anything?
Is sometimes pronounced very similarly to “do you want out”? I’d spell it ‘ought’, but I’ve seen ‘aught’.
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
