ghoti

[Jonathan Lighter]

  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
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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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