“GH” WORDS – WHY?

English words containing the pair “gh” tend to be not only spelling problems, but pronunciation puzzles. First, why the “gh” spelling?

These words almost all entered early into English which was at the time a mishmash of leftover Latin kept alive mainly by the church, remnants of Celtic language, incursions from the European continent (French Normans, Danish Jutes, German Saxons and Angles. and Scandinavians (mostly Norsemen) with a smattering of Dutch.

In the Middle Ages you could hear the guttural almost gargling sound of the “gh” when these two letters were in a word. When printing presses began to appear as the Renaissance slowly spread, this guttural sound still existed and was thus preserved in print.

The printers are largely responsible for whether a word is spelled “ough” or “augh” based on the printer’s locality and education.

The pronunciation of all such words changed over time adjusting to accommodate ease of speech. For example, through (sounds like thru) probably originally sounded more like its near look-alikes “though” (tho) and thought (thawt). And all of them dropped the “gh” gargle. It was just too much trouble for those who called themselves English or British. There may well be some Scots who continue to pronounce the “gh” when it occurs.

So, thanks basically to careless or slovenly speakers, we end up with “aught” rhyming with “ought” and words which vary in sound from “off” (cough) to “ooh” (through), “aff” (laugh), “aw” (caught) and “oh” (though).

And (oh, joy!) because this is English, some of these words have homonyms spelled without the “gh”, like rough versus ruff. It’s enough to make you want to gag (or is that gargle?).

#EnglishLanguage #ESL