Re: HUMOUR: Pronounce This...
From: | John Cowan <jcowan@...> |
Date: | Tuesday, September 17, 2002, 17:53 |
H. S. Teoh scripsit:
> Of course, one can never forget "GHOTI", pronounced [fiS]. (I forgot who
> invented this one, but it is constructed by taking "gh" from "enough", "o"
> from "women", and "ti" from "nation".)
George Bernard Shaw. But of course this one is bogus: GH is /f/ only when
syllabic final, O is /I/ *only* in the word "women" and no other, and
TI is /S/ only in -tion /S@n/.
> Talk about Maggelity -- yet ironically we find English so "regular" :-)
Who ever thought that? English is one of the least regular of all alphabetic
orthographies -- about 11% of the words don't conform to the rules, and the
rules in question are damned complicated.
--
What is the sound of Perl? Is it not the John Cowan
sound of a [Ww]all that people have stopped jcowan@reutershealth.com
banging their head against? --Larry http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
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