this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2024
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Showerthoughts

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The letters "gh" in the word "ought" are silent but "ought" is not pronounced like "out" (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 day ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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At least in my dialect/accent of English

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[โ€“] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Don't you pronounce "ought" like awt, with the back of your tongue pressed back in your mouth? Make that "ough" sound, and then a "g" sound. It should almost feel like your gagging. That tongue position is there for most words that use the "gh" phoneme. Sometimes you add an "f" sound because speakers didn't know how to make the precise sound without gagging, like "cough." That's the remnant of the abandoned glottal fricative.

Ok now be honest, have you been sitting by yourself making "awgh" sounds? Gold star if you felt like vomiting at some point.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

For me it's just a vowel sound and a T consonant on the end, the tongue isn't closing the airway enough to approach a consonant on the vowel sound. The restriction is at the back of the mouth, but it certainly doesn't feel like gagging

A glottal fricative is the consonant at the start of "happy" or "hello". The gh I'm thinking of is a voiced velar fricative. The voiced counterpart to the ch in Scottish English "loch" or the German "Buch"

Ok now be honest, have you been sitting by yourself making "awgh" sounds?

Well of course! Few things make me so grateful to live alone as any time I'm trying to figure out the specifics of how I say a thing