Sherman
My Word!
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Foeneticklee speaking, mastering English kan bee tuff And cold and blough. She kept her hands inside her mough. It chilled her THROUGH, Her hands turned blough. But still the squall The faster flough. And even THOUGH There was no snough, The weather was A cruel fough. It shook each BOUGH And she saw hough The animals froze Each cough and sough. It made her COUGH Pray, do not scough She coughed until Her hat blew ough. This anonymously written ditty (a short, simple song) is a good example of the chasm that stretches between the sounds of words and the spelling of words. In this instance it is the letter cluster -ough. There were five different sounds for -ough in the five stanzas. They are: rough (ruf), through (thru), though (tho), bough (bou), and cough (cawf). There are five more sounds _ 10 in all _ for -ough: bought (bot), hiccough (hik-up), lough (lok,a lake), thorough (thur-o), and trough (trof, as in cough, but sometimes pronounced traw-th). This difference between the sounds of a word and the spelling was created by:
Ache _ mustache; Beau _ beauty; Card _ ward; Do _ go; Early _ dearly; Five _ give; Goose _ choose; Here _ there; Moth _ mother, and Word _ sword. Then there's the story of a Frenchman who came to New York City to study English. After several difficult days of learning to pronounce the sounds of -ough, break/speak, scour/four, father/fatter, he dejectedly walked by the theater district on his way to his hotel. On one marquee was the sign ``The Brothers Karamazov _ Pronounced Success.'' So he went to his room and committed suicide! To complicate our situation there are those silent letters, the ones that are written but not pronounced. Here are just 10 examples, alphabetically unspoken.
2. B is silent in thumb. 3. E is silent in steak. 4. G is silent in reign. 5. I is silent in thief. 6. K is silent in know. 7. L is silent in would. 8. S is silent in aisle. 9. W is silent in two. 10. Z is silent in rendezvous. Let's take the reverse of ``letters representing different sounds'' so that a ``single sound can be represented by different letters.'' Example: Fish. In the early 1920s, George Bernard Shaw announced a new way to spell fish_ Ghoti. GH as in enough. O as in women. TI as in nation. Also, PHUSI can spell fish. Ph as in physic. U as in busy. SI as in pension. My first name would be CHSRRHMBAGKN. CHS is SH as in fuchsia. RRH is ER as in myrrh. MB is M as in limb. AG is A as in diaphragm. KN is N as in knife. CHSRRHMBAGKN equals SHERMAN. You might like to try this exercise on your own name, and see what happens. My Word! of April 5 asked readers for anagrams of their names. (An anagram is a word or phrase reordering the letters of another word or phrase.) KAYLA MARIE SINDLINGER sent a wonderful rearrangement of her name: I AM A REALLY KIND SINGER. It is remarkable, since Ms. Sindlinger is only 11 years old, in the sixth grade at COMMODORE PERRY SCHOOL DISTRICT. Way to go, Kayla! That's all for today. My Word! Sherman S. Jubelirer is a self-described verbivore, a devourer of words. The retired owner of the Whitmer-Smith store in Sharon shares his love of words with The Herald's readers in this column, which appears on the first Sunday of each month. |