This blog entry started because today is the anniversary of Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw’s birth in 1856. He is widely misattributed with the observation that English spelling is so irregular that ghoti could be pronounced the same as fish:

gh as in rough
o as in women
ti as in nation

That got me thinking about other irregularities in English, and I remembered one of my favorite schticks from the comedian Gallagher, who pointed out problems with spelling and pronunciation. This blog won’t do justice to his presentation, but you can get the general idea:

• Why don’t good and food rhyme? They both end in -ood.
• If L-A-U-G-H-T-E-R is pronounced “laffter,” shouldn’t D-A-U-G-H-T-E-R be pronounced “daffter”?
• Comb, tomb, and numb: why don’t these words rhyme?
• Finally, go and do should rhyme. As Gallagher observes, “These ain’t two words off in the corner somewhere that we don’t use. These are GO and DO!”

Shaw was interested in spelling reform, and after his death the Shavian Alphabet was developed. In that alphabet, the word currently spelled “fish” would be spelled with a new letter indicating the “sh” sound.

Or we could try it this way.

Posted Thu, 26 Jul 2007 00:26:14 and filed under Language at Play, eNotes. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.