I can't remember who wrote:

>>>An
>>>interesting side note to this is the reason there was
>>>a move to change the spelling in the first place was
>>>that with the pronuniciation of English depending on
>>>the word and not the letter it is quite possible to
>>>write the word "fish" as "ghoti". The "gh" as in
>>>"rough". The "ti" as in "nation" and I can't remember
>>>where the "o" comes from. But it works.

Angasule replied:

>>That is, of course, completely bogus :) 'gh' has the [f] value in some
>>words (like 'rough', I believe), but never, AFAIK, at the beginning of a
>>word (think of 'ghost', 'ghoul'... no more examples come to my mind now,
>>too much CRPG'ing!), 'ti' is [S] in a few places only, too (I can't
>>think of other place than the ending -tion, btw, maybe it's a latin
>>ending originally?). About that 'o', I guess that it depends on how you
>>were saying the 'i' to start with (btw, I guess you could change that to
>>'ghtti', I've heard 'ballet' said with a final 'i' :) )!

Óskar added:

>This is an excellent point regarding the "ghoti" deal; I didn't want
>to argue about English spelling, so I left it unsaid.
>
>-tion, btw, is a Latin ending. The 'o' is from 'women', as Birgit
>pointed out. Shaw's use of 'ti' as [S] is completely "bogus", since
>it never gets pronounced that way outside of the -tion environment.

I'm glad you used quotes around "bogus" because Shaw never intended it as a
real lesson in pronounciation - it was just a satiric comment on the
ridiculous variation in pronounciation rules from numerous linguistic
influences upon the English language. And if we added Oscar Wilde's and
Mark Twain's commentaries along with the rest of Shaw, this could go even
further off-topic than it already is... ;->

-Selv

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