I wish I wish I had a ghyti.
It's a line from a Dr. Suess book. Pronunciation guide:
- tough
- analysis
- pronunciation
:p
Quote:
Originally Posted by
matsp
And the reason for this is that no one has dared do what the Italians, Spanish and French did: Rework the dictionary whilst not too many people could read/write, so that spelling and pronunciation matched up. Instead we have stupidities like read being able to rhyme with bead and red without changing it's spelling, and the town of Slough rhyming with cow, not tough or dough. And of course the river Thames and the herb thyme do pronounce the "th" as "t", which is not the case for other "th" in English (comes from their origin in Gaelic/Welsh).
--
Mats
Right. And we've adopted words from so many languages without much effort to normalize their spelling, which of course makes English one of the harder languages to learn. Come to think of it, you bloody Brits are responsible for this whole mess in the first place. :D