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Re: Sincerest Apology to John P.
karl h schwerin (schwerin@UNM.EDU)
Wed, 24 Apr 1996 13:28:22 -0600
On Mon, 22 Apr 1996, karl h schwerin wrote:
> George Bernard Shaw vigorously argued for reform of English spelling
> conventions (obviously without much success). I always appreciated his
> spelling of a common English world as follows:
>
> ghoti
>
> (correct pronunciation to follow in a later post)
>
At least two of you knew that ghoti is GBS' spelling of 'fish.'
gh as in enou_gh_ = f
o as in w_o_men = i
ti as in na_ti_on = sh
As you can see, these are all legitimate spellings for those phonemes in
English, though of course part of the cue as to pronunciation in ordinary
English has to do with the positioning of the letters within a word.
Karl Schwerin SnailMail: Dept. of Anthropology
Univ. of New Mexico Albuquerque, NM 87131
e-mail: schwerin@unm.edu
There are people who will help you get your basket
on your head because they want to see what is in it.
-- African proverb
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