ghoti

[Barbara Need]

In sheer frustration over the people who can't spell my last name
(Need), I once figured out that there were 672 ways to spell
(according to spelling rules of English). With one cheat, my favorite
is <Gneighbde>: gn-gnu, eigh-Leigh, bd (the cheat, since I believe it
happens in one word, word initially)-bdellium, silent e. Of course,
there are three actual words in all of that!

Barbara

Barbara Need
UChicago

>   In the one I more or less remember, from an early collection of
>_Ripley's Believe It or Not!_ (ca1960), a fictitious Mr.
>"Phthyrrhgnolo" pronounced his name as "Turner."
>
>   "phth" as "phthisic" (I remember I had to look that one up).
>
>   "olo" as in "colonel"]
>
>   "gn" as in "gnu."
>
>   "yrrh" as in "myrrh."
>
>   So obvious.
>
>   JL
>
>Stephen Goranson <goranson at DUKE.EDU> wrote:
>   ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>-----------------------
>Sender: American Dialect Society
>Poster: Stephen Goranson
>Subject: Re: ghoti
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Quoting "James A. Landau" :
>
>>  I once saw a similar gag to "ghoti", which I cannot recall except
>>  that it had three phonemes, one of which was /t/ spelled "phth" as in
>>  "phthisic". Does anyone know it?
>
>Perhaps:
>gheauphtheightough pronounced potato
>gh as in hiccough
>eau as in beau
>phth as in phthisis
>eight as in eight
>ough as in though
>
>(along with ghoti/fish and one other) in The English Journal Mar. 1945 p.152
>
>SG
>
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