Re: Not phonetic but IN CONCLUSION

David Zitzelsberger wrote at 2004-04-16 11:26:12 (-0700)
 > gh can only represent the f sound if it is both following ou and at the of
 > the root word.
 > o in woman is a debatable
 > ti can only represent the sh sound if it is part of tion.
 >
 > So, say again, what is ghoti? Because its not fish by any stretch of our
 > abused orthography.
 >

No, it's fish.  It's a joke about the irregularity of English
orthography.

 > -----Original Message-----
 > From: Gary Shannon [mailto:fiziwig@YAHOO.COM]
 > Sent: Friday, April 16, 2004 10:39 AM
 > To: CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU
 > Subject: Re: Not phonetic but IN CONCLUSION
 >
 >
 > --- David Zitzelsberger <DavidZ@...> wrote:
 > > what is ghoti?
 >
 > "gh" from "enough"
 > "o" from "women"
 > "ti" from "nation"
 >
 > Thus "ghoti" spells "fish".  I don't recall off hand
 > who first dramt that one up, but I'm inclined to guess
 > it was G.B. Shaw.


It's certainly attributed to Shaw.  However, I've been unable to find
any reference online to confirm this, and one page says the following:

 |  "Ghoti" is popularly attributed to George Bernard Shaw.  But Michael
 | Holroyd, in Bernard Shaw: Volume III: 1918-1950: The Lure of Fantasy
 | (Chatto & Windus, 1991), p. 501, writes that Shaw "knew that people,
 | 'being incorrigibly lazy, just laugh at spelling reformers as silly
 | cranks'.  So he attempted to reverse this prejudice and exhibit a
 | phonetic alphabet as native good sense [...].  But when an
 | enthusiastic convert suggested that 'ghoti' would be a reasonable way
 | to spell 'fish' under the old system [...], the subject seemed about
 | to be engulfed in the ridicule from which Shaw was determined to save
 | it."