Talk:Ghoti

Silent ghoti
I removed this section because it had been marked as unreferenced for over a year. It looked like original research to me. --HGK745 (talk) 23:36, 4 September 2014 (UTC)


 * It's a reductio ad absurdum, but would be better with some kind of source... AnonMoos (talk) 02:13, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

I remember learning the silent version in the 70s, at the same time I heard about the "fish" version. Lisapaloma (talk) 18:15, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

Really?
"However, linguists have pointed out that the location of the letters in the constructed word is inconsistent with how those letters would be pronounced in those placements" - no shit, Sherlocks. -- 07:09, 21 August 2016‎ 83.23.137.238
 * Exactly what I thought and was about to say. I'm going to reword it to sound less ridiculous. Bataaf van Oranje (Prinsgezinde) (talk) 11:51, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

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Wrong claim
// To illustrate: gh can only resemble f when following the letters ou / au at the end of certain morphemes ("cough", "laugh")// I think, it is incorrect. For example in the word thorough, 'gh' is 'following' 'ou' but does not have 'f' sound. Nor in through, where again 'gh' is following 'ou'. I suggest that either it is removed or suitably modified. --செல்வா (talk) 20:28, 4 July 2018 (UTC)
 * The remark says that "gh" can only resemble "f" when it follows "ou" or "au". It does not say that "gh" alway resembles "f" when it follows "ou" or "au". —BarrelProof (talk) 21:40, 4 July 2018 (UTC)
 * I am sorry, I don't get it. If the word 'only' exists, I don't seem to follow your logic. It is better to rephrase it. Perhaps as follows: To illustrate, gh can resemble f, but not always, when following the letters ou/au at the end of certain morphemes (("cough", "laugh")".--செல்வா (talk) 02:44, 24 July 2018 (UTC)

Anyway, it's actually the trigraph "ugh" which can sometimes be pronounced with an [f] pronunciation -- not the digraph "gh"... AnonMoos (talk) 01:42, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

Is "mention" sh or ch?
Under "Explanation", the article says "while ti would only resemble sh when followed by a vowel sound ("mention", "martian", "patient", "spatial")".

However, when properly enunciated, "mention" has a ch sound, not a sh sound. I believe (though I could be wrong) that the general rule might be that ti will resemble sh when followed by a vowel, unless it's preceded by a plosive consonant, in which case it will resemble ch. For example, "mention", "action", and "option" all use the ch sound, while the aforementioned "martian" uses the sh sound, because the R is not plosive.

As always, there are no 100% rules in English, because then we come to a word like "bastion", which has the ch sound, even though the S is not plosive. But I'm sure someone can figure it out better than I could. --70.27.113.90 (talk) 19:59, 23 October 2019 (UTC)


 * The basic or historically-correct pronunciation is [mɛnʃən] with "sh" (IPA [ʃ]) sound. However, everywhere in English (or at least some dialects of English), a  nasal+fricative sequence can have a stop inserted between -- so "triumph" can be [traɪʌmpf] with a "p" inserted  between the "m" and "f" sounds, "length" can be [lɛŋkθ] with a "k" inserted between the "ng" and "th" sounds, etc. etc.  When a "t" is inserted between "n" and "sh" as part of this pattern, this naturally becomes "ch" (i.e. IPA [tʃ]).  As for "bastion", most of the "-tion" words had their original Latin "t" consonant modified to an [s] sound in French, before they were borrowed into English, but "t" in "-tion" did not become [s] in French after [s]... AnonMoos (talk) 14:30, 1 November 2019 (UTC)