Re: tlhn'ks't, ngghlyam'ft, and other scary words

David Barrow wrote:
> John Cowan wrote:
>
>>Eight: bough, though, enough, cough, bought, through, hough, borough.
>>Not all dialects distinguish all of these.  (In RI they are
>>bough, tho, enuff, coff, baught, thru, hock, burro respectively.)
>>Even more remarkably, these eight pronunciations are distributed over
>>only about 30 words altogether.
>
> Nine if you include hiccough as an alternative spelling of hiccup
>
> ten if you consider alternative pronunciations of borough /bVr@/ or /bVrou/
He's already got 'borough' in the list once, and /bVrou/ (which I've
never heard, but you and John assure me that it exists) would be dealt
with by 'though', wouldn't it?

Tristan.