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Crazy English: ghoti

ghoti illustration: how crazy the English language can be showing that ghoti could be pronounced fish

Ghoti is a constructed word intended to illustrate some of the craziness in English punctuation, in that, taking the sounds of its parts from different places, it could be said as fish.

Said as: fish

Written as: ghoti

derived from: enouGH, wOmen, naTIon

In my book -ough, in particular, is the craziest as in enough, thorough, bough, through, although - all pronounced totally differently.

I’d heard it credited to George Bernard Shaw but, apparently, his biography credits it to an ‘anonymous spelling reformer’.

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