I'm a special ed teacher, and I grew up with an English teacher, a word nerd, 2 semi-bilingual parents, and 2 family members with reading disabilities. As a result, I've always been aware English is quirky, but nothing has made me more aware of how weird English is than teaching students with reading disabilities, and nothing has made me more annoyed at my own native language than having a struggling and/or frustrated and/or resigned student ask me why a word is spelled that way, and having no answer but "English is weird like that." I love this channel for at least giving me a better answer for those times.
I have long wondered how common dyslexia was among, say, Spanish or Turkish speakers. Too, with all our vowel sounds, we make about 44 noises and have only 26 letters, a couple of them redundant, to write them with. Blame those noble old Romans... And that we've had but stopped using 9 other letters, often because they distorted into misreadable forms (thorn, long S) or "damn if we know" (eth).
I love the explications for the same reasons! I am this kind of student haha. I'm French and always asked "but why" when I saw "illogical" words. It's tricky too! It is really interesting to understand how the words and meaning were constructed, whatever the language I think it helps a lot to understand the culture
@@Wazkaty I remember my first months studying French... all those silent letters, singly and in groups! But they're _systématique_ about it, and once you understand _la systéme,_ it's easier. English, lacking an authoritative Académie, is .ore scattershot.
@@w.reidripley1968 haha yes! It is exactly what happened for me! We struggle at school and then we memorize the all "exceptions" , and it's good! But for a foreign language... wow, memorisation is hard. I want to read English litterature and I struggle a bit, too much unknown vocabulary and syntax! I think it's hard in French too, I can feel it because some of my friends can't really read French litterature. It depends on your interests I guess
When my Dutch grandfather arrived in England in 1907, he had to recite Though the tough, cough and hiccough plough me through Through life's rough route my way I still pursue. Incidentally he referred to his waxed moustache as his "hirsute" appearance. He loved "prestidigitation" rather than conjuring.
It's because in Old English the gh (old English form generally just h) was pronounced like modern Dutch gutteral g sound. Through and thorough are essentially the same word, it's just that in 'through' the r has migrated to the front of the vowel instead of behind it. The Old English was essentially thurh (gutteral ending) like the modern German durch...also a gutteral ending. The same process gives us related place name elements like Bury and borough. These were both originally burh...like the German burg.
Hey! That's what I was about to point out! Glad I've checked other comments first. One thing to add: Thurh through → deur → door → door → through And the circle is complete.
@@donkensler Which is doubly funny when you realise that half the time the sound is supposed to be made in the middle of the tongue. Like in the aforementioned durch and bur(g/ch)... ;)
Yank here that taught English as a second language class. Students invariably asked about ‘ough’. My answer at the time was many word (most) words entered English determined the pronunciation. Nice to know I was somewhat correct. Something to stick in my bag for future classes.
I'm currently teaching my younger son to read, and I'm often describing why a word might look the way it does because if you say it with a different accent it kind of makes sense.
Thank you SO MUCH!!! I teach English to Italians and, like you, feel obliged to apologize on behalf of the English people for the spelling of these (and other) words.
Brilliant as always. These are videos however where sounds are critical and form the basis of the subject matter. Therefore it is particularly important to have no background music. Hope you agree.
Wonderful. The late Herb Caen published a poem about a major thoroughfare in San Francisco: "In San Francisco, driving through I came upon a street named Gough; Allergic to a name like Gough, I there began to sneeze and cough; I parked my car beneath a bough That overhung the street sign "Gough," And rested there awhile, although I did not like the street named Gough. No, I did not like the street named Gough About which this is quite enough." BTW, most of us say it rhymes with "cough." A major street in the District of Columbia is Loughboro Road. The cringe-worthy recording on the bus pronounces the first syllable as if it were "Lo."
I teach in Taiwan. My kids barely know their ABCs are a terrified of trying to pronounce a word without the teacher first telling them how to say it. You have some good ideas I can use. Thanks. I'll keep looking for your videos as they come out.
I have one theory: As in modern English 'oo' is used for 'u' sound (put), French used 'ou' for 'u'. U is derived from Y, which all come from Greek Y, which sounded like German Ü. For Greeks to write down sound 'u', they would write 'ΟΥ', and French copied it. In Cyrillic, sound 'u' used to be written as 'оу', latter simplified to just 'у'. Fun fact, Russia letter for 'ju' (sound like you) used to be written as 'IOY', but now it is 'Ю'. As for GH, it used to represent sound like CH in words like 'loch', it is hard H sound, usually IPA 'x'. GH was put there to differentiate spelling from CH used in 'check'. For transcription of Slavic language which use that hard sound 'H', modern English uses KH. So, plough used to be pluH, enough used be enuH, through used to be thruH, cough used to be kuH, and so on...
Only just discovered your channel, which fascinates me. Have you thought of doing a video about place names - or perhaps people's surnames? England is a very fertile hunting ground for peculiar names (geographical as well as personal), whose spellings provide no clue as to pronunciation. For example, except for locals in the relevant vicinities, there are probably very few people in England who would know how to pronounce the name of the North Devon village of Woolfardisworthy. And very few (myself included, until someone told me) who could pronounce the name of the market town in Northumberland which is spelled Alnwick. Answers to these two are: Woolsery (or Woolzery) and Annick.
With a lot of British place names, it seems like over time people just got into the habit of saying the names faster and faster, eventually skipping over some parts entirely, ending up with the modern pronunciations that ignore like half of the letters. Funnily enough, most French words are the same way, ignore half the word lol. When you’ve seen enough funky British place names, you get used to what parts they tend to ignore and what parts they usually say. I guessed Alnwick right, but that other one u mentioned was pretty extreme lol. I get it though, since the original name was rather long and a real mouthful lol, makes sense that they’d want to shorten it.
And Trottiscliffe (Trosley), Meopham (Meppum) Wouldham (Wooldum), Burham (Burrum) in my little bit of Kent... There must be a whole subset of English pronunciation in place names throughout Britain!
Other such fun English oddities include words ending in “ove” such as cove (and others) with a long O, love etc with a short U move etc with a long U sound.
There are sung heroes, there's just no need to say so because they already have songs about them. Think "Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier". That's what a sung hero looks like.
My last name is Clough, and I have always wondered why it has so many different pronunciations. I always thought that my family changed the pronunciation somewhere in the past. I guess having an old English word for a last name makes my family a unique part of lingual history.
Thank you. This presentation was astounding to this “o’er pond-er”. I love to learn about the intricacies of my native language. However, I am not so sure any longer that I truly am native. I cannot comprehend how you might guess how any of the ancient characters might have been pronounced. This must have taken years of research and of careful analysis.
Amazing and brilliantly clear thank you. i also feel like apologising not only to learners of English but to every child! Should we change these things? Some people think we should. Would we lose significant history? I don't know. But definitely hiccup.
Fascinating! Though does anyone British still write 'hiccough'? Most examples I've come across would write 'hiccup'. It would be interesting to find out if there are class / regional ways of spelling it here in the UK.
Like Homer Simpson, DOUGH, I HAD HOPED You would give me an insight as to how to spell correctly all the different ough words . Ough well Thank you this and all your other videos, you managed to dispell meny myths by giving us the origins of these meny words . Thank You For Your Efforts on our behalf. Sincerely, C&E*Ca.USA
Don’t apologise, French and German is full of craziness too!! As you well know 👍🏼😊 Nice video, I’m to reference your videos and hopefully get you subscribers when my English classes start back in September 👍🏼 Ian in France
You have an incredibly interesting way of presenting these little tidbits & facts. Language is fascinating, but with a great presenter like you, I could watch hours of information I'd eventually grow weary of otherwise :)
Great video but would love to see a video explaining how to pronounce Thames (in India generally pronounce like James but with a th at the beginning) or Greenwich.
In America the name Laughlan is pronounced the same as the word Laugh with the f sound. To get them to pronounce it with the k sound you have to include a k in the name like Locklan.
One day when I was four years old, five at the latest, I was sitting in the back seat of the car after Mom and I had just been to the grocery store. If I remember correctly, I had been a little bit sick that day and was out of preschool or kindergarten for the day. I distinctly remember asking Mom, "Coffee is spelled C-O-F-F-E-E, right?", to which Mom replied, "Yes." Then I said, "So if you take off the E-E, it would spell 'cough,' right?", and of course Mom said, "No," an answer which thoroughly confused me; it SEEMED like "coff" should be a proper spelling for the word. Certainly, I found out in a few years what the proper spelling was, but I've always remembered that little exchange with my mom, and I wonder every now and then if that could have been the experience that started me on the path to being curious about language and wanting to learn more about word origins and history and such. . .
I'm always a little sad when non native English speakers say "i'm sorry for my English." No need really, we're quite happy to figure it out and there's a very good chance that your English is always better than our attempt at your language.
I was taught brittish english at school (the text books all had Union Jack on them, so they must have been brittish), but it was always "hiccup" - until now, I didn't know hiccough existed.
Something I'd like to see here: from where did all of our punctuation marks come? What are their origins? Who invented them? Why are they named the way they are named?
The Loughborough one reminded me of the Snoop Dogg tweet where he was stoned in the shower and realised Mercedes has three 'Es' and they're all pronounced differently.
I sloughed off a whole slough of doubts and worries once i learned mental health vocabulary. Sluffed as in a snake sheds, and slew as in a large number or a path for a lot of logs in a river.) Narcissism is the root of 90% of all problems.
Maybe you've done this...What about 'ea' as in heart, hear, heard, pear, meander? And why do we have cowl, fowl, howl, jowl, owl, prowl, yowl and then bowel, dowel, towel, vowel all pronounced pretty much the same and then we have bowl?
Mouse - In Danish it is still "Mus" (as you pronounced it = Moos) and in German it is "Maus", though spelled slightly different very similar if not equal to the way it is pronounced in English. So fun how words morph as they travel. The origin seems to be "mus" and it is believed to have the original meaning "The stealing / thief" ... and that definition made my day (whether it turns out to be true or not, but right now Duden says so)
Nice one. As an ex TEFL teacher, I agree with the spirit of your video, best to laugh a bit. Was it Shaw who said that 'fish' could be spelt 'ghoti' ? We can take consolation from the French who can pronounce 'puit/puis' and mean 'a well' or 'then', and pronounce 'dans' and 'dent' /'de' and deux' the same way. Always a great source of puns though :-) C'est complètement ouf.
I met a man who introduced himself as "Lie-Chester." I gave him a puzzled look. He said he was named after the city in England where his parents were living when he was born. If his parents had actually physically been there, then one would think that they would have heard the name pronounced as the locals pronounced it.
I have always been hopeless in spelling. First off the different regional accents we have in English speaking countries make it impossible to know how a word is actually pronounced, second I am certain that my first spelling book was from England which is why I always feel the need to put unnecessary letters in words. Such as a "U" in colour as apposed to the American way color. Third mild dyslexia (undiagnosed) and fourth phonics just doesn't really work all that well for the English language there are always exceptions to rules, silent letters, weird ass letter like the "B" in doubt that make no since, and let's not even start with words like THERE, THEIR and THEY'RE, or TO, TOO and TWO.
This is hilarious. Great video. But my God, I'd hate to have to learn English as a second language. It's very easy at the outset because of our relatively straightforward grammar for basic sentences and our dead easy present tense verbs, but once you get past a certain level it's just any man for himself really. What a chaos.
Hear in Texas, I’ve heard Hough pronounced “Huff”. And thorough is usually “thur-oh” though there could be regional accents that say it differently. I don’t know. English is weird.
I just found this channel, and I love it, but I am a bit late to the party. Would you consider a video on the "omb" combo? I'm sure it's equally bizarre.
It makes me think that English needs another Standardization. Even if it winds up looking a bit ugly compared to the Old spellings. More and more often we see: Tho (Though) Thru (Through) Ruff (Rough) Why not continue this, to reflect how our language is actually pronounced, as we have in the past?
Why do people say more quickly when it makes more sense (to me) to say quicker. Things that are more something have 'er' at the end. i.e faster, harder, louder, higher, weaker, stronger, smaller, etc. But then there seems to be a bunch of 'more ....ly' words i,e more seriously, more rapidly, more happily etc. Why isn't it happier, seriouser, rapider? (Please shout me out if you answer this so i can show all my friends.)
Kookaburra.... could have been coughabough, lucky is Australian English, but then we have Wooli Wooli said Woo la wa luni, (not quite accurate but close) just for fun 😉
You mention 'hough', but there is also 'lough', the Irish (Hiberno-English, not Gaelic) spelling of the Scots 'loch, pronounced about the same'. As in, Lough Neagh, Lough Erne, Strangford Lough, Belfast Lough...
My family name (I'm in the U.S.) is spelled Shough, pronounced to rhyme with luck. Close to your reference of hock for the Scottish Hough, but not quite. Are you aware of this pronunciation? Any other words that use it? Or do you think it has just shifted over time as a family name from shock?
It is scarry to think that people who have not made up their mind on how their language should be written are the most influential in propagating that language.
I imagine Hiccough was originally pronounced 'hic-coff', not 'hic-up', so it would make total sense (multiple pronunciations of 'ough' notwithstanding). Either way, from now on I'm going to spell it hiccough.
This is amazing! All I can think about is: Englisch is a hard language. It can be learned through tough an thorough thought though. I hope thats right. I am a non-native speaker.
I am from Italy, a nation that uses the roman alphabet and roman spelling; this is a blessing: if a person says a word you have never heard you can write it down all the same without error or find it on the vocabulary. when I was trying to teach English to my little niece I told her firstly "see this words? they are like people faces: you just have to learn the name of each face".
Italian living in Scotland here, could not agree more! If one wants the acme of spelling absurdity, don't look past Scottish nameplaces... e.g. Kilconquhar is pronounced "kee-nyu-khar"
That's actually what neuroscientists say. The brains of people reading English look more like the brains of people reading Chinese than people reading European languages. Except probably Portuguese, which is just as idiosyncratic as English.
I used to be puzzled by the many pronunciations of ea. Compare: Fear, Bear, Heart, Steak, Pearl. Such a common vowel combination, such variety of sounds they make together and one can't ever guess the pronunciation from the writing.
When you revealed that the spellings reflected their pronunciations at the time, I thought you would walk us through a timeline of when each of these words got their spellings.
That is honestly what I would have loved to have done and I looked into whether it was possible. But with the information we have, it just isn't. That's probably for the best, because it would take aaaages.
@@RobWords Yes, I also felt this video seemed more like an introductory chapter to the topic rather than the whole thing. I'm sure some particular cases could be traced out though certainly not the whole lot. Perhaps you have material there for more separate (reasonably short) videos?
Thank you and thanks for watching! Another upside is that it keeps me from spending my time doing something less constructive (probably binge-eating jaffa cakes).
Also promotes creativity in ads and merchandising, at least in the USA. A word currently in common use cannot be used alone as a trademark, nor can a phrase in common use, UNLESS it is spelled incorrectly. Hence all the “cremes” and “kremes” in product names. Imitations of foods with a legally and customarily used name cannot be named after the targeted food directly, so modified spellings of their names, such as “chikin” strips, or “meet” pies, are used for fake products. Even IBM got in on this, inventing the terms “byte” and “bubble” for groups of 8 and 4 bits treated as units by processor hardware. These terms spread throughout the industry, but not as trademarks, along with “half word” (16 bits), “fullword” (32 bits), and “double word” (64 bits). Bad spelling = good marketing!
@@RobWords Yes, but are they cakes though, or ought we to think of them as biscuits? Please discuss thoroughly, work through the possiblities and then let us know of your thoughts on the matter. Sorry if this seems a bit naughty but I was taught to be a critical thinker and definitive answers need to be sought for the sake of clarity.
I'm sure there's probably enough material to make a video on the different uses of 'ea' in English. I had a Dutch housemate who would pronounce the English word 'idea' like "eye-dee". Since I knew that in German it's 'Idee', I asked her if it was pronounced that way in Dutch too (they are similar, see * below). She asked me why I asked & I said that I thought she was just saying it the Dutch way. She asked how I said it & I let her know that we enunciate the 'a' at the end. She told me she had thought that the 'ea' in 'idea' rhymed with 'sea'. I replied with something like: "No, but the sea might give you nausEA" Giggles ensued. Anyway. Just an _idea_ for you. 😉 * Phonetic alphabet & English sound equivalents to explain the different pronunciations I was talking about in my anecdote: *idea* (English): īdēə, "eye-dee-ah" or "eye-dear" *Idee* (German): ideé, "ee-deeh" *idee* (Dutch): idee, "ee-dey" My friend's "English" pronunciation: īdē, "eye-dee"
Thanks Rob. Now people will know why I pronounce my last name as "Dockerty" and not Dougherty as it is spelled. The ock or awk sound is Gaelic and used in Scotland and Ireland (where the name originates) but usually pronouced using the dough sound in the U.S. In Ireland it is now spelled Doherty and they use the ock sound. The British government changed the original spelling from O'Dochartaigh to Dougherty (1600's) and then to Doherty (1800's). Some people have resurrected the prefix O' which means grandson of.
It's interesting how the original spelling of O'Dochartaigh seems to fit better with our current view of spelling/ pronunciation. I would be much more likely to say that correct, than your current spelling which I'm afraid I would attempted to say "dough - erty", even if it would have sounded wrong - that's just how I read it x')
How interesting! My great-grandmother's maiden name was Doherty - She pronounced it Doar'-ty where the oa combo sounded like you start to say O but ended ended with an A (almost like a breath sound or caught in throat) The way she said it the word sounded very Irish even though she was born in TX in 1800's (actually, family has been in US, from what I can find, since 1700's) ... The family now just pronounce Dar'ty - which sounds very southern.
Oh goodness. I was raised being told there were 6 ways to pronounce our last name. I realized the existence of the 7th around 2015 (thorough 'a'), the 8th around 2018 (hiccough 'up'), and today I learn of the bloomin' 9th (hough 'ock')
I had a friend growing up in Mississippi with the last name Gough. They pronounced it "Gow" (or at least close to that). Of course Mississippians are famous for butchering the proper pronunciations of names (e.g. Brett Favre), so I don't know how accurate that was. We also pronounced Garcia "Garsha". LOL
@@tampazeke4587 oh God that's awful😆 it's a bit like when, on any American cookery show, I hear the non-word "par-mi-zhan" spoken, which always absolutely sets my teeth on edge! Of course I can respect "aluminum", " 'erbs", "zucchini", and all your rhotic "r"s. - where Americans really enunciate all the "r"s like "burr-gurr" for "burger" where we would say "ber-guh" - although I have noticed that "re-frijj-er-ay-terr" over the last decade or so seems to be gradually getting replaced by our, it has to be said, far more sensible "fridge"😉 There are good reasons for all of the above. But parmezhan is just awful - if that cheese is going to be Anglicised - and there's no reason we should have to call it Parmigiano - why not just par-me-zan? It's just a mistake, substituting the "zh" sound for the "s" in "parmesan" for the "s" sound in "measure" or "pleasure" for absolutely no reason other than nor knowing not to😏 a bit like "coo-de-grah" for "coup-de-grace"...😉
Haha, I forgot furlough! I was talking to a Polish friend about how ridiculous English spelling and our pronunciation of our own words can seem, and gave him all the "ough" words I could think of. Including rough (ruff), cough (koff), chough (chuff), bough (bow) plough (plow) sough (sow), ouch (owch) pouch (powch), through (throo) thorough (thurrah?) borough (burrah?) etc etc. Actually, I've just realised that if something hit you in the stomach, "ough" would seem a more onomatopoeic way to spell the noise you make rather than oof! Wait! My Firefox wants to correct plough, but doesn't offer plow! 🤦♂😂 And obviously it doesn't know that a chough is a large Raven like bird either. Then of course there is a bird called a Ruff (large Sandpiper), where the male has a ring of display feathers around his neck. Fashionable humans copied this and killed many different birds so they could make themselves a "ruff". 😔
One of the challenges of British English spellings is that they reflect the point at which they were set into print and then became 'fixed'. Pronunciation continued to evolve, but the spelling was fixed. This explains not only the oddities of 'ough' but also the silent 'k' in words such as knife and knight, plus silent 'gh' in words again like knight, night, right etc.
Oh, Jay Foreman had a good scene relating to this and the name "Worcester". Hold on, let's see if I can find it Link: ua-cam.com/video/uYNzqgU7na4/v-deo.html
You should've mentioned that the root cause of various pronunciations was gradual weakening of /x/ sound, spelled gh. During this process, different ways of compensation were applied, for example lengthening of the preceding vowel (as in night or thought) or using /f/ (as enough) as an approximate. BTW, traces of occasional mixing of /f/ and /x/ can be found in Germanic languages (achter vs. after, kracht vs. Kraft). There are also Slavic examples like Polish kafel vs. German Kachel, adding also /xf/ and /k/ flavours.
Many years ago there was a skit involving Lucille Ball and her husband Ricky Riccardo on her TV program where he was reading a bedtime story to their child. It had lots of those OUGH words and Ricky goofed every time he encountered one and was corrected by Lucy. It was hilarious as he made those attempts using the last correction on the next word.
Hough is pronounced Hoch (in the back of your throat, like Loch Lomond, sort of a German sound to English people) rather than Hock. English people can never seem to quite get this, always saying Lock Lomond, Lock Ness etc instead of Loch Ness
I've always spelled it hiccup. When I saw hiccough in print, I thought it was a cutesy new portmanteau meaning a cross between a hiccup and a cough
If you’re American it’s because of spelling reform after the Revolution. Plow for instance instead of Plough.
@@lookoutforchris in canada ive always seen hiccough spelled hiccup, and plough spelled plough.
@@colly6022 Yup. We just get a mishmash of the two.
@@colly6022 Yeah, Canadians are in some suspended animation between the Brits and us Yanks. E.g., "tyre", "labour", "colour".
@@donkensler Most of us actually spell it "tire", but I do tend to use the "our" spellings most of the time.
I'm a special ed teacher, and I grew up with an English teacher, a word nerd, 2 semi-bilingual parents, and 2 family members with reading disabilities. As a result, I've always been aware English is quirky, but nothing has made me more aware of how weird English is than teaching students with reading disabilities, and nothing has made me more annoyed at my own native language than having a struggling and/or frustrated and/or resigned student ask me why a word is spelled that way, and having no answer but "English is weird like that." I love this channel for at least giving me a better answer for those times.
I have long wondered how common dyslexia was among, say, Spanish or Turkish speakers.
Too, with all our vowel sounds, we make about 44 noises and have only 26 letters, a couple of them redundant, to write them with. Blame those noble old Romans... And that we've had but stopped using 9 other letters, often because they distorted into misreadable forms (thorn, long S) or "damn if we know" (eth).
I love the explications for the same reasons! I am this kind of student haha. I'm French and always asked "but why" when I saw "illogical" words. It's tricky too! It is really interesting to understand how the words and meaning were constructed, whatever the language I think it helps a lot to understand the culture
@@Wazkaty I remember my first months studying French... all those silent letters, singly and in groups! But they're _systématique_ about it, and once you understand _la systéme,_ it's easier.
English, lacking an authoritative Académie, is .ore scattershot.
@@w.reidripley1968 haha yes! It is exactly what happened for me! We struggle at school and then we memorize the all "exceptions" , and it's good! But for a foreign language... wow, memorisation is hard. I want to read English litterature and I struggle a bit, too much unknown vocabulary and syntax! I think it's hard in French too, I can feel it because some of my friends can't really read French litterature. It depends on your interests I guess
@@w.reidripley1968 A lot of French hate silent letters 😂
When my Dutch grandfather arrived in England in 1907, he had to recite
Though the tough, cough and hiccough plough me through
Through life's rough route my way I still pursue.
Incidentally he referred to his waxed moustache as his "hirsute" appearance. He loved "prestidigitation" rather than conjuring.
It's because in Old English the gh (old English form generally just h) was pronounced like modern Dutch gutteral g sound. Through and thorough are essentially the same word, it's just that in 'through' the r has migrated to the front of the vowel instead of behind it. The Old English was essentially thurh (gutteral ending) like the modern German durch...also a gutteral ending.
The same process gives us related place name elements like Bury and borough. These were both originally burh...like the German burg.
Oh yeah, the "gh" "ch" ending English speakers have such a problem with because it sounds as if you're clearing your throat.
Hey! That's what I was about to point out!
Glad I've checked other comments first.
One thing to add:
Thurh
through → deur → door → door → through
And the circle is complete.
Sorry, I switched deur and door accidentally
@@donkensler Which is doubly funny when you realise that half the time the sound is supposed to be made in the middle of the tongue. Like in the aforementioned durch and bur(g/ch)... ;)
@@mennolente4807 you can edit a comment, you don't have to write under it. And I don't understand the remark.
Yank here that taught English as a second language class. Students invariably asked about ‘ough’. My answer at the time was many word (most) words entered English determined the pronunciation. Nice to know I was somewhat correct. Something to stick in my bag for future classes.
I'm currently teaching my younger son to read, and I'm often describing why a word might look the way it does because if you say it with a different accent it kind of makes sense.
Thank you SO MUCH!!! I teach English to Italians and, like you, feel obliged to apologize on behalf of the English people for the spelling of these (and other) words.
it's honestly fascinating learning the reasons why English is such a messed up & complicated language
Brilliant as always. These are videos however where sounds are critical and form the basis of the subject matter. Therefore it is particularly important to have no background music. Hope you agree.
Wonderful. The late Herb Caen published a poem about a major thoroughfare in San Francisco: "In San Francisco, driving through I came upon a street named Gough; Allergic to a name like Gough, I there began to sneeze and cough; I parked my car beneath a bough That overhung the street sign "Gough," And rested there awhile, although I did not like the street named Gough. No, I did not like the street named Gough About which this is quite enough." BTW, most of us say it rhymes with "cough."
A major street in the District of Columbia is Loughboro Road. The cringe-worthy recording on the bus pronounces the first syllable as if it were "Lo."
I teach in Taiwan. My kids barely know their ABCs are a terrified of trying to pronounce a word without the teacher first telling them how to say it. You have some good ideas I can use. Thanks. I'll keep looking for your videos as they come out.
I have one theory:
As in modern English 'oo' is used for 'u' sound (put), French used 'ou' for 'u'.
U is derived from Y, which all come from Greek Y, which sounded like German Ü.
For Greeks to write down sound 'u', they would write 'ΟΥ', and French copied it. In Cyrillic, sound 'u' used to be written as 'оу', latter simplified to just 'у'. Fun fact, Russia letter for 'ju' (sound like you) used to be written as 'IOY', but now it is 'Ю'.
As for GH, it used to represent sound like CH in words like 'loch', it is hard H sound, usually IPA 'x'. GH was put there to differentiate spelling from CH used in 'check'. For transcription of Slavic language which use that hard sound 'H', modern English uses KH.
So, plough used to be pluH, enough used be enuH, through used to be thruH, cough used to be kuH, and so on...
I totally buy this! It feels plausible at least for a large group of these
Please do a video on the great vowel shift! I find it fascinating.
Only just discovered your channel, which fascinates me. Have you thought of doing a video about place names - or perhaps people's surnames? England is a very fertile hunting ground for peculiar names (geographical as well as personal), whose spellings provide no clue as to pronunciation. For example, except for locals in the relevant vicinities, there are probably very few people in England who would know how to pronounce the name of the North Devon village of Woolfardisworthy. And very few (myself included, until someone told me) who could pronounce the name of the market town in Northumberland which is spelled Alnwick. Answers to these two are: Woolsery (or Woolzery) and Annick.
With a lot of British place names, it seems like over time people just got into the habit of saying the names faster and faster, eventually skipping over some parts entirely, ending up with the modern pronunciations that ignore like half of the letters. Funnily enough, most French words are the same way, ignore half the word lol.
When you’ve seen enough funky British place names, you get used to what parts they tend to ignore and what parts they usually say. I guessed Alnwick right, but that other one u mentioned was pretty extreme lol. I get it though, since the original name was rather long and a real mouthful lol, makes sense that they’d want to shorten it.
And Trottiscliffe (Trosley), Meopham (Meppum) Wouldham (Wooldum), Burham (Burrum) in my little bit of Kent... There must be a whole subset of English pronunciation in place names throughout Britain!
I would be so excited if you put out a video on the great vowel shift!!!
Hi, excellent video! Q from a non-native speaker, who still loves English all the same: do run and done always rhyme for every native speaker?
Other such fun English oddities include words ending in “ove” such as
cove (and others) with a long O,
love etc with a short U
move etc with a long U sound.
Please explain unmatched pairs. Such as discombobulated, but not combobulated, and unsung heroes, but not sung heroes.
There are sung heroes, there's just no need to say so because they already have songs about them. Think "Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier". That's what a sung hero looks like.
My last name is Clough, and I have always wondered why it has so many different pronunciations. I always thought that my family changed the pronunciation somewhere in the past. I guess having an old English word for a last name makes my family a unique part of lingual history.
Thank you. This presentation was astounding to this “o’er pond-er”. I love to learn about the intricacies of my native language. However, I am not so sure any longer that I truly am native. I cannot comprehend how you might guess how any of the ancient characters might have been pronounced. This must have taken years of research and of careful analysis.
I have a farm business in Scotland, and the word 'haugh' crops up pretty often
Amazing and brilliantly clear thank you. i also feel like apologising not only to learners of English but to every child! Should we change these things? Some people think we should. Would we lose significant history? I don't know. But definitely hiccup.
Fascinating! Though does anyone British still write 'hiccough'? Most examples I've come across would write 'hiccup'. It would be interesting to find out if there are class / regional ways of spelling it here in the UK.
I would REALLY like you to explain the pronunciation of Edinburgh.
Like Homer Simpson,
DOUGH,
I HAD HOPED
You would give me an insight as to how to spell correctly all the different ough words .
Ough well
Thank you this and all your other videos, you managed to dispell meny myths by giving us the origins of these meny words .
Thank You For Your Efforts on our behalf.
Sincerely,
C&E*Ca.USA
Don’t apologise, French and German is full of craziness too!! As you well know 👍🏼😊
Nice video, I’m to reference your videos and hopefully get you subscribers when my English classes start back in September 👍🏼
Ian in France
US American here. I always thought bough was pronounced the same as a bow-and-arrow because I read that ships have a "bow"...
You have an incredibly interesting way of presenting these little tidbits & facts. Language is fascinating, but with a great presenter like you, I could watch hours of information I'd eventually grow weary of otherwise :)
In the central US we pronounce Loughborough as Loffburrow.
Great video but would love to see a video explaining how to pronounce Thames (in India generally pronounce like James but with a th at the beginning) or Greenwich.
In America the name Laughlan is pronounced the same as the word Laugh with the f sound. To get them to pronounce it with the k sound you have to include a k in the name like Locklan.
One day when I was four years old, five at the latest, I was sitting in the back seat of the car after Mom and I had just been to the grocery store. If I remember correctly, I had been a little bit sick that day and was out of preschool or kindergarten for the day. I distinctly remember asking Mom, "Coffee is spelled C-O-F-F-E-E, right?", to which Mom replied, "Yes." Then I said, "So if you take off the E-E, it would spell 'cough,' right?", and of course Mom said, "No," an answer which thoroughly confused me; it SEEMED like "coff" should be a proper spelling for the word. Certainly, I found out in a few years what the proper spelling was, but I've always remembered that little exchange with my mom, and I wonder every now and then if that could have been the experience that started me on the path to being curious about language and wanting to learn more about word origins and history and such. . .
We pronounce 'thorough' the same in Australia, and I'm pretty sure New Zealand as well.
Looking forward to your video on the great vowel shift!
This reminds me that you might talk about the English verbs whose past form ends in -ought...
Thank you ❤
The initials for my first & last names have the same sound but are spelled inconsistently.
My Russian professor told us that the hardest language to learn is Aborigine, followed by English. Watching your videos I don't doubt it.
As someone whose surname starts with OUGH, I find this thOUGHtful and thorOUGH.
I'm always a little sad when non native English speakers say "i'm sorry for my English." No need really, we're quite happy to figure it out and there's a very good chance that your English is always better than our attempt at your language.
I was taught brittish english at school (the text books all had Union Jack on them, so they must have been brittish), but it was always "hiccup" - until now, I didn't know hiccough existed.
Something I'd like to see here: from where did all of our punctuation marks come?
What are their origins? Who invented them? Why are they named the way they are named?
Fabulous.
The Loughborough one reminded me of the Snoop Dogg tweet where he was stoned in the shower and realised Mercedes has three 'Es' and they're all pronounced differently.
I'm enamoured with how all the Cs in "Pacific Ocean" are pronounced differently.
Chough is a new word for me here in America.
Here in the (still-alive) Republic of Texas, most of us pronounce "thorough" as THU-row." Can't speak for Okies, though (THOW)!
I sloughed off a whole slough of doubts and worries once i learned mental health vocabulary. Sluffed as in a snake sheds, and slew as in a large number or a path for a lot of logs in a river.) Narcissism is the root of 90% of all problems.
The Great Vowel Shift. Only slightly better known than its sister revolution, The Great Vowel Movement.
When are we getting that Great Vowel Shift video?
Is there a version of this UA-cam channel regarding the German language, but with English explanations?
Maybe you've done this...What about 'ea' as in heart, hear, heard, pear, meander?
And why do we have cowl, fowl, howl, jowl, owl, prowl, yowl and then bowel, dowel, towel, vowel all pronounced pretty much the same and then we have bowl?
I live on Loughborough Dr. The first and second "ough" are pronounced differently. 😆
Mouse - In Danish it is still "Mus" (as you pronounced it = Moos) and in German it is "Maus", though spelled slightly different very similar if not equal to the way it is pronounced in English. So fun how words morph as they travel.
The origin seems to be "mus" and it is believed to have the original meaning "The stealing / thief" ... and that definition made my day (whether it turns out to be true or not, but right now Duden says so)
Nice one. As an ex TEFL teacher, I agree with the spirit of your video, best to laugh a bit. Was it Shaw who said that 'fish' could be spelt 'ghoti' ?
We can take consolation from the French who can pronounce 'puit/puis' and mean 'a well' or 'then', and pronounce 'dans' and 'dent' /'de' and deux' the same way.
Always a great source of puns though :-)
C'est complètement ouf.
I used to be one of those who was sniffy about people saying "Aks" instead of "Ask". Have you done a video about this?
Loo-gah-bah-roo-gah - my favourite town name in games.
And there are those two crazy city names in the US: Gloucester and Worcester, respectively pronounced Glúlstr and Úlstr.
I met a man who introduced himself as "Lie-Chester." I gave him a puzzled look. He said he was named after the city in England where his parents were living when he was born. If his parents had actually physically been there, then one would think that they would have heard the name pronounced as the locals pronounced it.
Assuming you are referring to Leicester, why did he/his parents chuck an aitch in?
Fun video!
I have always been hopeless in spelling. First off the different regional accents we have in English speaking countries make it impossible to know how a word is actually pronounced, second I am certain that my first spelling book was from England which is why I always feel the need to put unnecessary letters in words. Such as a "U" in colour as apposed to the American way color. Third mild dyslexia (undiagnosed) and fourth phonics just doesn't really work all that well for the English language there are always exceptions to rules, silent letters, weird ass letter like the "B" in doubt that make no since, and let's not even start with words like THERE, THEIR and THEY'RE, or TO, TOO and TWO.
Being American, I had to look up 'chough.'
It's a kind of bird.
Ouch, this is tough, she thought, though she was thorough and saw the drought through.
I love your railing it looks like swans 🥰
This is hilarious. Great video. But my God, I'd hate to have to learn English as a second language. It's very easy at the outset because of our relatively straightforward grammar for basic sentences and our dead easy present tense verbs, but once you get past a certain level it's just any man for himself really. What a chaos.
Thank you! Interesting stuff!
What subject did you study? That is, where can I find more information on English!
Christopher brOUGHton
say hi to your old friends in low-burrow
WooHoo! America! Spelling “hiccup” the most logical way since the colonist arrived!
Hear in Texas, I’ve heard Hough pronounced “Huff”. And thorough is usually “thur-oh” though there could be regional accents that say it differently. I don’t know. English is weird.
As an American (Dakota) person, I have NEVER come upon the spelling of hiccup as hicough.
Thorough is Australian too
I just found this channel, and I love it, but I am a bit late to the party. Would you consider a video on the "omb" combo? I'm sure it's equally bizarre.
Can you explain why British people say "th" as an "f" sound. Also as a prem league fan, why is leciester city pronounced Lester. Thanks
Ay heave dhe best speling
Could you please confirm. Was the word 'donut' originally 'doughnought'? To me it makes sense as it is literally a nought made of dough. Cheers.
It makes me think that English needs another Standardization.
Even if it winds up looking a bit ugly compared to the Old spellings.
More and more often we see:
Tho (Though)
Thru (Through)
Ruff (Rough)
Why not continue this, to reflect how our language is actually pronounced, as we have in the past?
-ough pronounced as 'ock' is also in the land of Eire.
Have you made a video on lieutenant?
Why do people say more quickly when it makes more sense (to me) to say quicker. Things that are more something have 'er' at the end. i.e faster, harder, louder, higher, weaker, stronger, smaller, etc. But then there seems to be a bunch of 'more ....ly' words i,e more seriously, more rapidly, more happily etc. Why isn't it happier, seriouser, rapider? (Please shout me out if you answer this so i can show all my friends.)
Kookaburra.... could have been coughabough, lucky is Australian English, but then we have Wooli Wooli said Woo la wa luni, (not quite accurate but close) just for fun 😉
You mention 'hough', but there is also 'lough', the Irish (Hiberno-English, not Gaelic) spelling of the Scots 'loch, pronounced about the same'. As in, Lough Neagh, Lough Erne, Strangford Lough, Belfast Lough...
My family name (I'm in the U.S.) is spelled Shough, pronounced to rhyme with luck. Close to your reference of hock for the Scottish Hough, but not quite. Are you aware of this pronunciation? Any other words that use it? Or do you think it has just shifted over time as a family name from shock?
I shall now insist on the spelling of the name of my local town - Sidcup, being spelled as SIDCOUGH. Much posher.
It is scarry to think that people who have not made up their mind on how their language should be written are the most influential in propagating that language.
I imagine Hiccough was originally pronounced 'hic-coff', not 'hic-up', so it would make total sense (multiple pronunciations of 'ough' notwithstanding). Either way, from now on I'm going to spell it hiccough.
On behalf of the non-English speaking persons: I accept your (much needed) apology, dearest creature in creation.
This is amazing!
All I can think about is:
Englisch is a hard language.
It can be learned through tough an thorough thought though.
I hope thats right. I am a non-native speaker.
Bravough! That's soughperb!
I had to use a text to speech to read that
Here’s my take at it: Molten snow fallen from the bough flowed through the trough, though. "That's enough", I thought.
@@WasickiG Excellent!
Almost! :-
"English", not "Englisch";
"and", not "an";
"that's", not "thats".
Otherwise, it's very good!
I am from Italy, a nation that uses the roman alphabet and roman spelling; this is a blessing: if a person says a word you have never heard you can write it down all the same without error or find it on the vocabulary. when I was trying to teach English to my little niece I told her firstly "see this words? they are like people faces: you just have to learn the name of each face".
I love this comparison! With your permission, I'll use it with my students, as well :)
Pronunciation in English is _simple_ - memorize each word. I didn't say it was _easy._
Italian living in Scotland here, could not agree more!
If one wants the acme of spelling absurdity, don't look past Scottish nameplaces... e.g. Kilconquhar is pronounced "kee-nyu-khar"
@@Carlowski Visit Wales! I was in a town that had no vowels in its name.
That's actually what neuroscientists say. The brains of people reading English look more like the brains of people reading Chinese than people reading European languages. Except probably Portuguese, which is just as idiosyncratic as English.
I used to be puzzled by the many pronunciations of ea. Compare:
Fear, Bear, Heart, Steak, Pearl. Such a common vowel combination, such variety of sounds they make together and one can't ever guess the pronunciation from the writing.
Past tense Read as well
@@mr.rocket5835 Feared, Beard, Hearted, Steaked, Pearled. Do not work...
@@simbiant4 that’s not my point. my point is that past tense read (which is spelled read too) has yet another “ea” sound than fear, bear, etc
@@mr.rocket5835 I thought you would have gotten the joke in beard. But I guess not.
Yes! and Tear (the verb) and tear (the noun). I think we just have to accept the fact that English is a language for the crazy.
When you revealed that the spellings reflected their pronunciations at the time, I thought you would walk us through a timeline of when each of these words got their spellings.
That is honestly what I would have loved to have done and I looked into whether it was possible. But with the information we have, it just isn't. That's probably for the best, because it would take aaaages.
@@creamwobbly But that's _augh_ though, not _ough_ (oops, how did that 'though' slip through?!)
@@RobWords Yes, I also felt this video seemed more like an introductory chapter to the topic rather than the whole thing. I'm sure some particular cases could be traced out though certainly not the whole lot. Perhaps you have material there for more separate (reasonably short) videos?
There is a big upside to the ridiculous English spelling, it brings us entertaining and informative videos such as this one!
Thank you and thanks for watching! Another upside is that it keeps me from spending my time doing something less constructive (probably binge-eating jaffa cakes).
Also promotes creativity in ads and merchandising, at least in the USA.
A word currently in common use cannot be used alone as a trademark, nor can a phrase in common use, UNLESS it is spelled incorrectly. Hence all the “cremes” and “kremes” in product names.
Imitations of foods with a legally and customarily used name cannot be named after the targeted food directly, so modified spellings of their names, such as “chikin” strips, or “meet” pies, are used for fake products.
Even IBM got in on this, inventing the terms “byte” and “bubble” for groups of 8 and 4 bits treated as units by processor hardware. These terms spread throughout the industry, but not as trademarks, along with “half word” (16 bits), “fullword” (32 bits), and “double word” (64 bits).
Bad spelling = good marketing!
@@RobWords Yes, but are they cakes though, or ought we to think of them as biscuits? Please discuss thoroughly, work through the possiblities and then let us know of your thoughts on the matter. Sorry if this seems a bit naughty but I was taught to be a critical thinker and definitive answers need to be sought for the sake of clarity.
Not only that, English is phonetically amazing and beautiful; quite exotic. So, keep it up that way!
Ricky Ricardo did this on I love lucy
I'm sure there's probably enough material to make a video on the different uses of 'ea' in English.
I had a Dutch housemate who would pronounce the English word 'idea' like "eye-dee". Since I knew that in German it's 'Idee', I asked her if it was pronounced that way in Dutch too (they are similar, see * below). She asked me why I asked & I said that I thought she was just saying it the Dutch way. She asked how I said it & I let her know that we enunciate the 'a' at the end.
She told me she had thought that the 'ea' in 'idea' rhymed with 'sea'.
I replied with something like:
"No, but the sea might give you nausEA"
Giggles ensued.
Anyway. Just an _idea_ for you. 😉
* Phonetic alphabet & English sound equivalents to explain the different pronunciations I was talking about in my anecdote:
*idea* (English): īdēə, "eye-dee-ah" or "eye-dear"
*Idee* (German): ideé, "ee-deeh"
*idee* (Dutch): idee, "ee-dey"
My friend's "English" pronunciation: īdē, "eye-dee"
That last pronunciation is also heard in countrified speech, mostly in the Old South and out West.
ah yes, "phonetic alphabet"
@@w.reidripley1968 For context, could you please specify to which country you are referring?
(I'm Australian)
@@arkanon8661
What?
@@sirknight4981 it's not the ipa so they're confused as to what "phonetic alphabet" this is
Thanks Rob. Now people will know why I pronounce my last name as "Dockerty" and not Dougherty as it is spelled. The ock or awk sound is Gaelic and used in Scotland and Ireland (where the name originates) but usually pronouced using the dough sound in the U.S. In Ireland it is now spelled Doherty and they use the ock sound. The British government changed the original spelling from O'Dochartaigh to Dougherty (1600's) and then to Doherty (1800's). Some people have resurrected the prefix O' which means grandson of.
How interesting! I've wondered how to pronounce this name when I've come across it. So much history (and politics) wrapped up in one name... Amazing.
Even ‘Dockerty’ isn’t quite right. It’s more DoCHerty (in the back of your throat) like LoCH Lomond in Scotland.
Here in southern illinois in the US, there are some people in my town with that name. They pronounce it “DOOR-dee,” like the front door.
It's interesting how the original spelling of O'Dochartaigh seems to fit better with our current view of spelling/ pronunciation. I would be much more likely to say that correct, than your current spelling which I'm afraid I would attempted to say "dough - erty", even if it would have sounded wrong - that's just how I read it x')
How interesting! My great-grandmother's maiden name was Doherty - She pronounced it Doar'-ty where the oa combo sounded like you start to say O but ended ended with an A (almost like a breath sound or caught in throat) The way she said it the word sounded very Irish even though she was born in TX in 1800's (actually, family has been in US, from what I can find, since 1700's) ... The family now just pronounce Dar'ty - which sounds very southern.
I am glad they called it "the great vowel shift" and not" the great vowel movement" .
😆😆😅😂😂
The great vowel shift is when everything went to shift
Oh goodness. I was raised being told there were 6 ways to pronounce our last name. I realized the existence of the 7th around 2015 (thorough 'a'), the 8th around 2018 (hiccough 'up'), and today I learn of the bloomin' 9th (hough 'ock')
I had a friend growing up in Mississippi with the last name Gough. They pronounced it "Gow" (or at least close to that). Of course Mississippians are famous for butchering the proper pronunciations of names (e.g. Brett Favre), so I don't know how accurate that was. We also pronounced Garcia "Garsha". LOL
We have a street in San Francisco...Gough...pronounced "Gawf"!
I grew up in Scotland and we pronounced hough as hoch (same as in loch) - potted hough was a favourite dish.
😆
@@tampazeke4587 oh God that's awful😆 it's a bit like when, on any American cookery show, I hear the non-word "par-mi-zhan" spoken, which always absolutely sets my teeth on edge! Of course I can respect "aluminum", " 'erbs", "zucchini", and all your rhotic "r"s. - where Americans really enunciate all the "r"s like "burr-gurr" for "burger" where we would say "ber-guh" - although I have noticed that "re-frijj-er-ay-terr" over the last decade or so seems to be gradually getting replaced by our, it has to be said, far more sensible "fridge"😉 There are good reasons for all of the above. But parmezhan is just awful - if that cheese is going to be Anglicised - and there's no reason we should have to call it Parmigiano - why not just par-me-zan? It's just a mistake, substituting the "zh" sound for the "s" in "parmesan" for the "s" sound in "measure" or "pleasure" for absolutely no reason other than nor knowing not to😏 a bit like "coo-de-grah" for "coup-de-grace"...😉
My students and I THOROUGHLY enjoyed this video!
Haha, I forgot furlough! I was talking to a Polish friend about how ridiculous English spelling and our pronunciation of our own words can seem, and gave him all the "ough" words I could think of. Including rough (ruff), cough (koff), chough (chuff), bough (bow) plough (plow) sough (sow), ouch (owch) pouch (powch), through (throo) thorough (thurrah?) borough (burrah?) etc etc. Actually, I've just realised that if something hit you in the stomach, "ough" would seem a more onomatopoeic way to spell the noise you make rather than oof!
Wait! My Firefox wants to correct plough, but doesn't offer plow! 🤦♂😂 And obviously it doesn't know that a chough is a large Raven like bird either.
Then of course there is a bird called a Ruff (large Sandpiper), where the male has a ring of display feathers around his neck. Fashionable humans copied this and killed many different birds so they could make themselves a "ruff". 😔
One of the challenges of British English spellings is that they reflect the point at which they were set into print and then became 'fixed'. Pronunciation continued to evolve, but the spelling was fixed. This explains not only the oddities of 'ough' but also the silent 'k' in words such as knife and knight, plus silent 'gh' in words again like knight, night, right etc.
In rural SW Scotland some people still pronounce the gh in night, right, light with the guttural CH sound, like nicht, richt, licht.
Oh, Jay Foreman had a good scene relating to this and the name "Worcester". Hold on, let's see if I can find it
Link: ua-cam.com/video/uYNzqgU7na4/v-deo.html
@@richg7163 my surname causes some confusion with foreigners.
@@steveslight9312 Is it literally S-light or Slit??? Sorry if I get it wrong
@@harrybrown4952 it is SLIGHT as in sleight of hand. In old textural documents it can be slite. My family can be traced back to 1600s.
You should've mentioned that the root cause of various pronunciations was gradual weakening of /x/ sound, spelled gh. During this process, different ways of compensation were applied, for example lengthening of the preceding vowel (as in night or thought) or using /f/ (as enough) as an approximate. BTW, traces of occasional mixing of /f/ and /x/ can be found in Germanic languages (achter vs. after, kracht vs. Kraft). There are also Slavic examples like Polish kafel vs. German Kachel, adding also /xf/ and /k/ flavours.
Add the Dutch G, and it becomes even cloudier.
@@BrBill
Like this?
ua-cam.com/video/AlwO0xvm3fw/v-deo.html
Add the Swedish sj, skj, sk before front vowels, and you get the funny combined sound /xfw/ in many dialects.
Scandanavian Gs are half disappeared too and Don't use the /x/ whilst in Dutch a G is /x/
@@jorriffhdhtrsegg Hæ?! Hvilket skandinaviske språk kan du da? Sj, skj, kä, kö, ky, på svensk høres som x, f, og w, alle sammen.
Many years ago there was a skit involving Lucille Ball and her husband Ricky Riccardo on her TV program where he was reading a bedtime story to their child. It had lots of those OUGH words and Ricky goofed every time he encountered one and was corrected by Lucy. It was hilarious as he made those attempts using the last correction on the next word.
Hough is pronounced Hoch (in the back of your throat, like Loch Lomond, sort of a German sound to English people) rather than Hock. English people can never seem to quite get this, always saying Lock Lomond, Lock Ness etc instead of Loch Ness