Talk:Pronunciation

ough

I was afraid when I put in examples of the different pronunciations of ough that someone would dispute them. I'm not fluent in the various pronunciation-symbologies, so here is my layman's attempt at listing how I, an Aussie, pronounce each of these words:

rough	ruff
through	throo
bough	as in how
cough	koff
thorough	thuruh
thought	thort
though	thow, as in low
hiccough	hikkkup
dough	dow, as in low

As you can see, for me thorough is different to though, and dough is the same as though.

(I've concentrated on the pronunciation of ough and have not distinguished between soft and hard ths.)

Philip J. Rayment 22:56, 30 September 2008 (EDT)

Ah, I wasn't sure if it was a regional thing, so I had consulted dictionary.com to make sure before making the edit. Dictionary.com lists only one acceptable (American) pronunciation for both "thorough" and "though", which ends in the same vowel sequence (in IPA too). This is the same sequence for "dough" as well, and it's the one that rhymes with "low". But now that you've written out how you pronounce "thorough" in Australia, I can imagine how there would be that pronunciation as well. So maybe there should be a clarification that they are all different in Australian English, but in American English only 7 are distinct. (actually, I'd go a step further, since I've never seen an American use the spelling "hiccough" for "hiccup"). Thanks for taking the time to write a detailed clarification, Philip. -Foxtrot 23:29, 30 September 2008 (EDT)

I'd like to list the pronunciations using the pronunciation guide in the (Aussie) Macquarie Dictionary, but they use the IPA characters which don't appear to be in a standard character set. If I can find a way to represent these (e.g. html entities), I might still list those pronunciations. Philip J. Rayment 02:46, 1 October 2008 (EDT)

Okay, here is my table modified to show the Macquarie Dictionary pronunciation codes. I'm showing the codes with Lucida Sans Unicode, on the belief that that is the most widely available font that shows these characters. Also, many of the characters are very similar, and it was tedious doing this, so I can only hope that I've got no mistakes here.

	my layman's version	Macquarie Dictionary pronunciation
rough	ruff	rʌf
through	throo	θru
bough	as in how	baʊ
cough	koff	kɒf
thorough	thuruh	ˈθʌrə
thought	thort	θɔt
though	thow, as in low	ðoʊ
hiccough	hikkkup	ˈhɪkʌp
dough	dow, as in low	doʊ

Philip J. Rayment 05:22, 1 October 2008 (EDT)

To lend a Bonifide American^TM hand here, around these parts thorough rhymes with though which rhymes with dough. And thought rhymes with aught. I have seen the repetitive, spontaneous contractions of the diaphragm called "hiccoughs", though it's far more common to see them spelled "hiccup" (not that that makes it more correct). Maybe we should expand the section to talk about dialects? I find this discussion pretty interesting :) HelpJazz 12:46, 1 October 2008 (EDT) PS: Technically, some Americans do pronounce "thorough" as "thuruh", but these people mostly live in the south.