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Ough is a four-letter sequence, a tetragraph, used in English orthography and notorious for its unpredictable pronunciation. [1] It has at least eight pronunciations in North American English and nine in British English , and no discernible patterns exist for choosing among them.
The variable outcome, along with other variable changes and the ambiguity of the Middle English spelling ou (either /ou̯/ or /uː/ in Early Middle English, accounts for the numerous pronunciations of Modern English words in -ough-(e.g. though, through, bough, rough, trough, thought, with -ough-pronounced /ou/, /uː/, /au/, /ʌf/, /ɒf/, /ɔː ...
5.2 ough words. ... words that are respelled in a 'foreign' way may be misread as if they are English words, e.g ... in thorough, borough, and names ending ...
Most phonemes in English can be spelled in more than one way. E.g. the words f ea r and p ee r contain the same sound in different spellings. Likewise, many graphemes in English have multiple pronunciations and decodings, such as ough in words like thr ough, th ough, th ough t, thor ough, t ough, tr ough, and pl ough.
In English, gh historically represented [x] (the voiceless velar fricative, as in the Scottish Gaelic word loch), and still does in lough and certain other Hiberno-English words, especially proper nouns. In the dominant dialects of modern English, gh is almost always either silent or pronounced /f/ (see Ough).
The following is a list of English words without rhymes, called refractory rhymes—that is, a list of words in the English language that rhyme with no other English word. . The word "rhyme" here is used in the strict sense, called a perfect rhyme, that the words are pronounced the same from the vowel of the main stressed syllable onwa
Differences in pronunciation between American English (AmE) and British English (BrE) can be divided into . differences in accent (i.e. phoneme inventory and realisation).See differences between General American and Received Pronunciation for the standard accents in the United States and Britain; for information about other accents see regional accents of English.
This is a list of English words inherited and derived directly from the Old English stage of the language. This list also includes neologisms formed from Old English roots and/or particles in later forms of English, and words borrowed into other languages (e.g. French, Anglo-French, etc.) then borrowed back into English (e.g. bateau, chiffon, gourmet, nordic, etc.).