Wait until you hear the bastard child of French, germanic and a bunch of other languages. You can have a word like “lead” and you don’t even know how to pronounce it!
Actually, you’re right, I didn’t even think about it
If I wrote “I love to read, I read an interesting book every day”, then the way you say the latter ‘read’ shifts from my original example, and it depends on context that comes later in the sentence
In the end, it’s all subjective but – if you’ll hear me out – thogh doesn’t alter the current spelling very much while maintaining a linguistic heritage (as the “thogh” spelling was also likewise used, during Middle English); also, the number of words ending in just the “o” vowel is less common, I feel, and will probably look doubly foreign to a native English speaker due to the consonant digraph (though, again, subjective; maybe not).
However, – additionally – saving “oght” for “thought” is giving that letter combination a sound already covered in English by another letter combination: “aught” (e.g. caught, fraught, taught, …thaught…?). If we’re keeping “ogh” around, we might as well give it a unique pronunciation association to avoid the overlap that was the original problem with “ough”.
Finally, a single “f” for “tough” could work (certainly, there are examples) but we miss out on employing the Germanic linguistic tendency to indicate a short vowel sound with a double consonant, inherited by words such as “ball”, “fall”, “doll”, “call”, or “puff” (of course, there’s plenty of exceptions (“get”, “bet”, “mat”, etc.) but, so long as we’re making changes, firming up an existing rule (and avoiding the brief uncertainty of whether or not the reader is dealing with a prefix) would, arguably, be useful).
Wait until you hear the bastard child of French, germanic and a bunch of other languages. You can have a word like “lead” and you don’t even know how to pronounce it!
“I love to read, I read an interesting book yesterday”
Seriously, who came up with this shit 😭
Imagine you are reading this aloud, you can’t know how to pronounce the second “read” until you get to “yesterday”. Schrödingers pronunciation.
Actually, you’re right, I didn’t even think about it
If I wrote “I love to read, I read an interesting book every day”, then the way you say the latter ‘read’ shifts from my original example, and it depends on context that comes later in the sentence
Wack
Clearly, the solution is to make your own writing system for English and then have noone use it so it just looks like weird gibberish to them
“Y lov tu réd, y red an intarestiŋ buk tüdá.”
though thoughts are tough.
“Thogh thaughts are tuff,” in a more blessèd timeline.
tho foghts are tuf
In the end, it’s all subjective but – if you’ll hear me out –
thoghdoesn’t alter the current spelling very much while maintaining a linguistic heritage (as the “thogh” spelling was also likewise used, during Middle English); also, the number of words ending in just the “o” vowel is less common, I feel, and will probably look doubly foreign to a native English speaker due to the consonant digraph (though, again, subjective; maybe not).However, – additionally – saving “oght” for “thought” is giving that letter combination a sound already covered in English by another letter combination: “aught” (e.g. caught, fraught, taught, …thaught…?). If we’re keeping “ogh” around, we might as well give it a unique pronunciation association to avoid the overlap that was the original problem with “ough”.
Finally, a single “f” for “tough” could work (certainly, there are examples) but we miss out on employing the Germanic linguistic tendency to indicate a short vowel sound with a double consonant, inherited by words such as “ball”, “fall”, “doll”, “call”, or “puff” (of course, there’s plenty of exceptions (“get”, “bet”, “mat”, etc.) but, so long as we’re making changes, firming up an existing rule (and avoiding the brief uncertainty of whether or not the reader is dealing with a prefix) would, arguably, be useful).
Uh, that is pronounced “lead”. You’re welcome.
For those illiterates who need a clear example, “lead lead lead.” Simple geography.