There's a poem floating around the internet called "English is Tough Stuff," and it's very relevant to this week's discussion. This stanza is particularly applicable:
Finally, which rhymes with enough --
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!
We don't advise you to give up. Instead, we suggest a visit to the museum of English spellings. It's full of earlier pronunciations, and it's the best place to solve mysteries such as this one from listener Paul Harris:
"I would love to hear the complete history on words containing 'ugh' that are pronounced with an 'f' sound, such as cough and laugh etc. And please make sense of the usage of the same letters in the words dough and furlough for example, that have the same letters but do not make the same sound.
The history of "gh" in English is really messy and too much to get into in a five minute segment. However, we can help at least make some sense out of "gh" and its assorted pronunciations.
The "gh" in words like "cough" and "laugh" represents an earlier pronunciation in English. This pronunciation was what linguists would call a "velar fricative." A fricative is a kind of sound that we make by pushing the air out of our lungs, through our mouth, and we use our teeth, lips, and tongue to create friction.
The "gh" fricative is pronounced with the tongue all the way in the back of the mouth. The sound is what you would hear at the end of words like "loch" and "blech." It's like trying to make a hard "g" sound all the way at the back of your throat.
This sound was part of Old English, so a word like "knight" was pronounced "kuh-NICHT." In this case, the spelling was standardized, the "k" became silent, and then the velar fricative also became silent. We see the same sort of silencing in words like "eight," "daughter," and "thought."
In some cases, the velar fricative didn't become silent. Instead, it became an "f" sound. This is pronunciation of "gh" is found in words like "laugh," "tough," and "enough."
Another place "gh" shows up, this time with a completely different sound, is in words like "dough" and "furlough." To hear how that pronunciation came about, listen to the audio above.
