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Crazy English: ghoti

How to say ghoti as fish from George Bernard Shaw

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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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Published 13 Aug 2015

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