Ghoti is a constructed word used to illustrate irregularities in English spelling. It is a respelling of the word fish, and like fish is pronounced /ˈfɪʃ/. It has,
- gh, pronounced /f/ as in tough /tʌf/;
- o, pronounced /ɪ/ as in women /ˈwɪmɪn/; and
- ti, pronounced /ʃ/ as in nation /ˈneɪʃən/.
The first known published reference is in 1874, citing an 1855 letter that credits ghoti to one William Ollier (born 1824).[1] Ghoti is often cited to support English spelling reform, and is often attributed to George Bernard Shaw,[2] a supporter of this cause. However, a biography of Shaw attributes it instead to an anonymous spelling reformer.[3]
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Explanation of Ghoti
The /ʃ/ sound can be spelled eleven ways in English:[4] shirt, sugar, chute, action, issue, ocean, conscious, mansion, schwa, anxious, and special. (Some speakers of English do not use /ʃ/ in every one of these words. For example, issue may be pronounced as /ˈɪsju/ by some speakers of British English.) This phoneme is spelled ti only when the ti comes before a vowel in certain suffixes, as in nation and initial. Thus, this phoneme does not actually occur at the end of English words with the spelling "ti".
Likewise, gh can represent /f/ at the end or middle of the word, as in tough or laughter, but not at the beginning of the word. The consonant cluster gh represents a /g/ sound at the beginning of words such as ghost, and may be silent in the middle or end of words such as right and high.
Cultural references
- In Finnegans Wake, James Joyce alludes to ghoti: "Gee each owe tea eye smells fish." (p. 299)
- In the constructed language of Klingon, ghotI’ is the word for "fish".[5]
- In the episode of Batman "An Egg Grows in Gotham", Egghead uses Ghoti Oeuf as the name for his caviar business, and Batman explains the reference to Robin.
- Ghoti Hook is a 1990s Christian punk band.
- The Speech! allophone-based speech synthesiser ROM for the BBC Micro was tweaked to pronounce ghoti as fish. [6] Examination of the ROM's code reveals the string GHOTI used to identify the special case.
- In the online game Neopets, an aquatic petpet, which is distinctly fish-like in appearance, is called Ghoti.
See also
References
- ^ Benjamin Zimmer. "Ghoti before Shaw". Language Log. http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=81. Cites S. R. Townshend Mayer, “Leigh Hunt and Charles Ollier”, St. James’s Magazine, October 1874, page 406 (itself citing a 1855 letter from Ollier to Hunt).
- ^ Holroyd, Michael, Bernard Shaw: Volume III: 1918–1950: The Lure of Fantasy, Random House, 1994, ISBN 0-517-13035-1
- ^ See Jim Scobbie's article at alt-usage-english.org, citing Holroyd, page 501
- ^ Sadoski, Mark in Erlbaum, Lawrence; Imagery and text: A dual coding theory of reading and writing, 2001
- ^ Klingon Language Institute
- ^ "Re: Spelling Bees" Discussion of speech synthesis programs
External links
- How to pronounce "ghoti"
- Hau tu pranownse Inglish, an essay on spelling-to-sound rules that discusses "ghoti"
- "What is ghoti?" by Jim Scobbie
- Information on the phonetic Shaw Alphabet
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