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ray o'hara
Guest
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| Posted: Sun Oct 09, 2005 1:15 am
Post subject: Re: Ghoti and Fish |
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"Django Cat" <nospam@please> wrote in message
news:Y7adnTsHud6xdtreRVnyvg@brightview.com...
| Quote: | NICEGUY wrote:
HI all,
I heard that ghoti and fish have same pronunciation. Can "ghoti" sound
like fish? How is it possible?
Niceguy
It was George Bernard Shaw's demonstration of the lack of logic or
phonetic information in the English spelling system, but it's often
been pointed out that it doesn't work because no words *start* gh and
sound /f/.
DC
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And where I come from women is pronounced wuh men not wimmin.
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Django Cat
Guest
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| Posted: Sun Oct 09, 2005 5:01 am
Post subject: Re: "Ghoti" and "fish" [was: Re: Ghoti and Fish] |
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Bob Cunningham wrote:
| Quote: | On Sat, 08 Oct 2005 10:54:31 -0500, "Django Cat"
nospam@please> said:
Bob Cunningham wrote:
[...]
Anyway, I doubt that the clever person who came up with the
spelling "ghoti" for "fish" meant that "fish" could
actually be spelled that way. His cleverness lay in showing
in an amusing, concise way that English sounds can have a
number of different spellings.
GBS, or to put it another way, a well-known smartarse.
I don't know who the person was who devised "ghoti", but
it's pretty well established that it wasn't George Bernard
Shaw. In fact, as I remember, GBS disapproved of it because
he thought it would cast his phonetic-spelling movement in a
bad light.
Smatter a fact, see
http://alt-usage-english.org/excerpts/fxwhat04.html .
DC
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Wotcha know, you live & learn.
DC, enjoying ghoughpteighbteau crisps. |
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Numeromania
Guest
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| Posted: Sun Oct 09, 2005 5:02 am
Post subject: Re: Ghoti and Fish |
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ray o'hara wrote:
| Quote: |
And where I come from women is pronounced wuh men not wimmin.
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Interesting. Where are you from?
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Mike Lyle
Guest
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| Posted: Sun Oct 09, 2005 5:12 am
Post subject: Re: "Ghoti" and "fish" [was: Re: Ghoti and Fish] |
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Django Cat wrote:
[...]
| Quote: | DC, enjoying ghoughpteighbteau crisps.
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One more push, and you'll be writing Gaelic.
--
Mike. |
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Raymond S. Wise
Guest
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| Posted: Sun Oct 09, 2005 7:01 am
Post subject: Re: "Ghoti" and "fish" [was: Re: Ghoti and Fish] |
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Bob Cunningham wrote:
| Quote: | On 8 Oct 2005 01:54:20 -0700, "Raymond S. Wise"
mplsray@my-deja.com> said:
Bob Cunningham wrote:
On Fri, 7 Oct 2005 18:26:27 -0400, "Pavel314"
Pavel314@NOSPAM.comcast.net> said:
"Martin Ambuhl" <mambuhl@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:otq1f.10705$QE1.203@newsread2.news.atl.earthlink.net...
NICEGUY wrote:
HI all,
I heard that ghoti and fish have same pronunciation. Can "ghoti" sound
like fish? How is it possible?
'ghoti' can never be pronounced 'fish'. The claim that 'fish' could be
spelt 'ghoti' is a longer-standing part of the criticism of the
"irrationality" of English spelling. It is based on assigning phonetic
values to letters that they *never* have in the places they occur in
'ghoti.' It is specious, and should be ignored.
On the contrary, it should be admired as an ingenious
illustration of the absurdity of English spelling. The
tired old argument that the collocations in "ghoti" don't
occur in those positions in ordinary English words is not
persuasive. The sound [f] is spelled "gh" in English words,
so there's no reason to assume it could not be used that way
in a word that has not yet been coined. Same with "o"
pronounced [I] and "ti" pronounced [S].
Would M.A. argue that "beautiful" just missed being an
impossible spelling because there are no other English
words, except for other derivatives of "beauty", in which
"eau" is pronounced [ju:]?
What's a tired argument to you was a novel argument to me when I
encountered it just a few years ago. A foreigner learning English may
be confident that a word beginning with "gh" is *not* pronounced [f],
even though those letters may be pronounced that way at the end of some
words.
A foreigner learning English would be well-advised to not
make any assumption at all about how a given English word is
pronounced based on its spelling.
|
What you call an assumption is actually quite a strong rule, certainly
as strong as the rule that in English "tion" is pronounced "shun," for
example.
| Quote: |
"Beauty" and its derivatives may be considered an exception or a very
narrowly applied rule.
So why can't the [f] in "ghoti" be considered an exception
or a narrow, unique application of a rule? You can't have
your cake and eat it, too.
|
In truth, it *is* an exception. Like the spelling "ain't," "ghoti" is a
standard spelling of a nonstandard usage--in this case, a standard
spelling of a nonstandard spelling! But to recognize it as such defeats
the whole point of the exercise, which is make English spelling seem
more irregular than it actually is. "Ghoti" depends upon the conceit
that "'gh' can be pronounced [f] in English" applies to "gh" in any
position in a word, which proposition is flatly false.
| Quote: |
Anyway, I doubt that the clever person who came up with the
spelling "ghoti" for "fish" meant that "fish" could
actually be spelled that way. His cleverness lay in showing
in an amusing, concise way that English sounds can have a
number of different spellings. That "gh" doesn't normally
appear with the pronunciation [f] at the beginning of a word
is beside the point.
|
But the argument made against the "ghoti" example is precisely that
such reasoning is false. That is, the argument, "That "gh" doesn't
normally appear with the pronunciation [f] at the beginning of a word
is beside the point," is an indefensible position.
The only justification for the "ghoti" example is as a sort of joke, a
linguistic absurdity, similar to something the Marx Brothers might have
come up with.
Now if you're tempted to come back at me and say, "Hey, it *is* just a
joke!" then we will be in agreement.
| Quote: |
Another absurdity of English spelling is that one spelling
may have a wide variety of different pronunciations.
I think I've mentioned in alt.usage.english a few times over
the years that in one of my Russian classes there was a man
who was a native of an Eastern European country. He told me
that of all the languages he had learned, English was by far
the easiest. I said, "But how about the crazy spelling?"
His answer: "Americans can't spell, either".
|
--
Raymond S. Wise
Minneapolis, Minnesota USA
E-mail: mplsray @ yahoo . com |
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Iain
Guest
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| Posted: Sun Oct 09, 2005 3:03 pm
Post subject: Re: Ghoti and Fish |
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Numeromania wrote:
| Quote: | ray o'hara wrote:
And where I come from women is pronounced wuh men not wimmin.
Interesting. Where are you from?
|
I remember I never said "wimmin" instead of "women" until I was about
ten. I said "lady" more than "woman". I don't know whether mine was a
orthographic pronunciation or not.
~Iain |
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ray o'hara
Guest
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| Posted: Sun Oct 09, 2005 6:07 pm
Post subject: Re: Ghoti and Fish |
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"Numeromania" <anon@example.net> wrote in message
news:heY1f.1238$RG1.24@trndny08...
| Quote: | ray o'hara wrote:
And where I come from women is pronounced wuh men not wimmin.
Interesting. Where are you from?
|
New England |
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Petey the Wonder Dog
Guest
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| Posted: Mon Oct 10, 2005 4:00 pm
Post subject: Re: Ghoti and Fish |
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Looks like you said...
| Quote: | And where I come from women is pronounced wuh men not wimmin
|
In Avenel NJ, it's:
woman = wuh man
women = wim men
Or you could just substitute "broads".  |
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Raymond S. Wise
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Oct 12, 2005 1:03 pm
Post subject: Re: Ghoti and Fish |
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Iain wrote:
| Quote: | Raymond S. Wise wrote:
Bob Cunningham wrote:
On Fri, 7 Oct 2005 18:26:27 -0400, "Pavel314"
Pavel314@NOSPAM.comcast.net> said:
"Martin Ambuhl" <mambuhl@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:otq1f.10705$QE1.203@newsread2.news.atl.earthlink.net...
NICEGUY wrote:
HI all,
I heard that ghoti and fish have same pronunciation. Can "ghoti" sound
like fish? How is it possible?
'ghoti' can never be pronounced 'fish'. The claim that 'fish' could be
spelt 'ghoti' is a longer-standing part of the criticism of the
"irrationality" of English spelling. It is based on assigning phonetic
values to letters that they *never* have in the places they occur in
'ghoti.' It is specious, and should be ignored.
On the contrary, it should be admired as an ingenious
illustration of the absurdity of English spelling. The
tired old argument that the collocations in "ghoti" don't
occur in those positions in ordinary English words is not
persuasive. The sound [f] is spelled "gh" in English words,
so there's no reason to assume it could not be used that way
in a word that has not yet been coined. Same with "o"
pronounced [I] and "ti" pronounced [S].
Would M.A. argue that "beautiful" just missed being an
impossible spelling because there are no other English
words, except for other derivatives of "beauty", in which
"eau" is pronounced [ju:]?
What's a tired argument to you was a novel argument to me when I
encountered it just a few years ago. A foreigner learning English may
be confident that a word beginning with "gh" is *not* pronounced [f],
even though those letters may be pronounced that way at the end of some
words.
"Beauty" and its derivatives may be considered an exception or a very
narrowly applied rule. Here's another exception: It occurred to me
recently, while watching *Family Guy,* that "quahog," a clam after
which is named the fictional city of Quahog, Rhode Island in the
program, is the only English word I can think of in which "a" by itself
(rather than in combinations such as "au" or "eau") is pronounced like
"oh."
Are you sure it's not the Focker effect?
~Iain
|
I did Google searches and came up with the following:
Searching for "Focker effect" I came up with
http://www5.allusenet.org/File.asp?service=27944
which has to do with consonants rather than vowels.
Searching for "Focker" and "phonology" I came up with
http://www.cumberlandchat.com/cgi-bin/Chat.cgi?board=Generic_cat;action=print;num=1102737217
which has an interesting bit of trivia about the family name "Focker"
and the MPAA.
Unfortunately, none of this appears to explain how it came to be that
"quahog" has among its pronunciations one in which "a" is pronounced
like "oh."
--
Raymond S. Wise
Minneapolis, Minnesota USA
E-mail: mplsray @ yahoo . com |
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Weatherlawyer
Guest
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| Posted: Thu Oct 13, 2005 5:38 am
Post subject: Re: Ghoti and Fish |
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Petey the Wonder Dog wrote:
| Quote: | Looks like you said...
And where I come from women is pronounced wuh men not wimmin
In Avenel NJ, it's:
woman = wuh man
women = wim men
Or you could just substitute "broads".
.. |
Dat pwonounced bwoads? |
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