From: Selvarv Stigard
Message: 1029
Date: 2001-03-13
>>>AnAngasule replied:
>>>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.
>>That is, of course, completely bogus :) 'gh' has the [f] value in someÓskar added:
>>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' :) )!
>This is an excellent point regarding the "ghoti" deal; I didn't wantI'm glad you used quotes around "bogus" because Shaw never intended it as a
>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.