On 2007-05-14 22:26, Rick McCallister wrote:
> And /brow/ in the US, at least all the people I've mey
> with that last name. I've heard Hough as /ha:k/ and
> /h@.../ although I wonder is the former were originally
> named Hoch. In Texas, I've heard drought as /draT/,
> often spelled <droth>
Sturtevant (1947: 148) writes that he always pronounced <trough> as
/trOT/ during his first thirty years and supposed that to be the
standard pronunciation until he saw <trough> in a printed list of words
with <gh> for /f/. He speculates that he learnt the word as "troth" from
his father, whose family came from Connecticut, where the pronunciation
was widespread. This, of course, is a case of /f/ ~ /T/, a common type
of confusion, made easier by the ambiguous spelling.
In my undergrad years I had a teacher, an Englishwoman, whose name was
Gough, pronounced /gOf/. As for <drought>, Johnston's pronouncing
dictionary published in 1764 had /drVft/ and /draUT/ (sic!) as
alternative pronunciations. The aberrant pronunciation of the
appellative <hough> (= <hock> in its anatomical meaning, OE ho:h, ho:)
with /-k/ is old. According to Jespersen it developed in compounds
before /s/ (<hough-sinew>, cf. OIc. há-sinar). This explains the /-k/
variant of the surname Hough. I think Hoo in English placenames has the
same origin ('heel' --> 'point of land'), also reflecting PGmc. *xanxa-.
Piotr