Re: tlhn'ks't, ngghlyam'ft, and other scary words
| From: | John Cowan <cowan@...> |
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| Date: | Thursday, February 6, 2003, 11:03 |
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Danny Wier scripsit:
> That's because my native language is English, which is
> obviously the language of the Devil, but it somehow functions with all those
> ridiculous spelling conventions. Tetragraphs. English has <ough> with six
> pronunciations,
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.
--
John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan cowan@ccil.org
To say that Bilbo's breath was taken away is no description at all. There
are no words left to express his staggerment, since Men changed the language
that they learned of elves in the days when all the world was wonderful.
--_The Hobbit_
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