your mail

[Dennis R. Preston]

Are we talking about "vowels" or "rhymes"?

dInIs (who tends not to think of rhymes)

>You're right of course. So I distinguish 8 "ough"s not 7. I could see
>cough rhyming with slough but that would still leave 8 pronunciations.
>
>Allen
>maberry at u.washington.edu
>
>On Sun, 5 Dec 1999, Kim & Rima McKinzey wrote:
>
>> >I...and the ough
>> >in "thought" = the the ough in "coughed".
>>
>> Surely you don't say either thawft to rhyme with kawft or, conversely, kawt
>> to rhyme with thawt...
>>
>> Rima
>>


Dennis R. Preston
Department of Linguistics and Languages
Michigan State University
East Lansing MI 48824-1027 USA
preston at pilot.msu.edu
Office: (517)353-0740
Fax: (517)432-2736