Religion, Money and Politics. The three things I was once told not to discuss at work. Oh and Motorcycles. Obviously.

Sunday, 6 March 2011

What does "ghoti" spell?

Fish, obviously.

Think about it;
GH - as in "That's enough", F
O - as in "Three women", I
TI - as in "Train Station", SH

GHOTI = FISH

Ah, the wonders of the English Language, nothing is as it seems!

4 comments:

  1. Technically incorrect. Here's why:

    -> To get the /f/ phoneme from , the has to be at the end of the word (enouGH, touGH, etc - I defy you to find me an example in English where the /f/ phoneme from the letters occurs anywhere else in a word).

    -> the ONLY word in English where represents the phoneme /ɪ/ (as in fish) is in the word women. For example, where have you ever seen the alternative spelling, 'swomming' for 'swimming'?

    -> as with the , the /ʃ/ phoneme ( for all you laypeople who don't understand the IPA) represented by depends on the placement of the letters. to represent /ʃ/ must be in the middle of the word. I don't know about you, but I've not seen 'shop' spelt 'tiop' anywhere...

    for more on the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet

    :P xxx

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  2. You are such a pedant!

    Although I am now wracking my brains for another word like "women"...


    :-P xx

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  3. and you said it wasn't displaying properly... gobbledegook indeed...

    :P

    xx

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  4. and hey, I didn't even start on the fact that there's only 26 letters in our alphabet, but there are over 50 phonemes in English... :D xx

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