Thorough, thought, cough, furlough... Why so many ways of pronouncing OUGH in English? - YouTube

Oh how I love a cup of coffee.

Hang on a second... how am I spelling that?

Yeah, well obviously. But, I could spell it like this:

Oh how I love a cup of coffee.

Bare with me.

So that's "oh" as in "though", "how"  as in "plough", "a" as in "thorough",

"cup" as in "hiccough" and "coffee" as in "cough".

Okay, so that's maybe a little bit ridiculous, but the many different ways in which you  can pronounce

just those four letter, OUGH, is perhaps the best demonstration

of the madness of English spelling.

So you've got the pronunciations I've just  mentioned, as in "though", "plough",

"cough", "thorough"... Which is British English  only...

and "hiccough", which I'll explain later, I promise.

And you can add to those the  pronunciations that we've got in the words "thought",

"through", "enough" and this slightly strange  word "hough"

that's only really used in Scotland.

So why are there so many ways of saying OUGH?

Well one of the main reasons is to do with when the spellings of these words was first defined.

English spelling was standardised in the centuries following the invention

of the printing press - so that's between the sort of 1400s and the 1700s.

Over those centuries the way in  which we pronounced English words changed... a lot.

That period included a baffling phenomenon  known as the Great Vowel Shift,

during which over just a couple of centuries the way in which  we pronounced vowels changed dramatically.

For example, at the start of the vowel shift  that was called a "moos", that was a "chilled",

and that was its "norzer".

The Great Vowel Shift can be blamed for a lot of the strange spellings in English.

It's worth a video in itself and at  some time I'll probably get round to it.

Anyway, different words containing OUGH had their  spellings defined at different periods

during this era of enormous change in English pronunciation.

So the spelling may well have reflected the way that word was being said at the moment it

was standardised, but sometimes very quickly, the pronunciation of the word

moved away from the  spelling. The different sets of pronunciations for OUGH

probably reflect when the different  sets of words had their spellings standardised.

Another thing to bear in mind is  that sometimes the pronunciation  

reflects a way of saying the word that was used by  a specific region or by a specific social group,  

but that pronunciation has since died out.

Take for example the words "though" and "ought".

Literature from the 1700s suggests that those  words were being pronounced by some members  

of the peasant class as "thof" and "oft",  making them more like the pronunciations of  

"trough" and "cough".

And that brings me neatly  onto, as promised, this word.

And why on earth that is pronounced "hiccup".

*hiccup*

Well the  reason is that some smart-arsed scholar, the like of which we have come across in other videos,

thought that the word "hiccup" must be related to the word "cough".

But of course, it's not.

Nevertheless, that's how they defined the spelling

and we've been stuck with it.

However, before  the spelling of "hiccough" was standardised in the 1600s,

one of the ways you could spell it  was HICCUP.

It makes a lot more sense and now that is how it's spelt in the United States and  occasionally elsewhere.

And you've got to say,

it's better.

At this point I almost feel like  I should apologise on behalf of the English for the

ludicrous inconsistency in the pronunciation of OUGH. You know,

I grew up near a town in England that was spelt  like this.

Do you know how that's pronounced?

Luff-burra.

The OUGH appears twice in this  word and it's said differently each time.

Just finally if you came to this video  because you're just getting to grips with  

English and you're looking for the magic trick  for knowing which pronunciation of OUGH to use  

and when... I'm sorry, there just isn't one.

The best thing you can do is listen to a native speaker saying the word and then copy it.

That's something I can help you out with.

Sip of coffee first.

Right, here we go: bough (bau), bought (bort),

borough (burra), brought (brort), chough  (chuff), dough (doe), enough (enuff), 

fought (fort), furlough (furlo), nought (nort), rough  (ruff), slough (slau) - although that's sometimes  

sloo or sluff. Sorry, that's not very helpful.

- sought (sort), through (throo), tough (tuff), trough (troff), wrought (rort).

And then there's the other ones I've said during this video.

Thanks for watching this video. If you've found it interesting, please do share it and give it a like.

Also: if there's a mystery of the English language that you'd like me to try and explain,

just pop it in the comments below. Thanks.