PRONUNCIATION

OUGH and AUGH

One of the strangest things in English pronunciation is the existence of words that contain the combination of letters OUGH, where this combination has a different pronunciation from other words that also contain OUGH. These letters usually appear as the ending of a word.

One of the big experts on English pronunciation has called this ‘the most extreme example of difficult pronunciation in English.’ However, these sounds are basic and you need to learn them.

There are SEVEN different sounds of OUGH and there are no rules to help you. Experience and practice will teach you these sounds in a few weeks. It is one of those subjects that you can remember easily because it is so weird and unusual.

I give below a list of these seven different sounds – there are not many other examples and these are the most common words you will meet. You have to memorise them.

When you have had some experience you will be able to test these sounds, reading them aloud. If a word sounds strange, it’s probably wrong.

For example, the best-known word on the list is probably, ‘enough’. You may know this word very well.

It has the sound AFF. If you try to apply the AFF sound to another word, for instance, ‘through’, you will realise that there is no word in English that is pronounced THRAFF.

In other words, this subject is simple if you use your ears. Children who can’t read have no problems with this topic because they don’t know HOW each word is written

There is also a group of words that has the combination AUGH. But these words are not so complicated because AUGH produces only TWO sounds.

We start with the list of words with OUGH – and don’t worry, these are nearly all the words of this kind that I know!

You should get your dictionary out and do the meanings now.

WORDS WITH OUGH:

* past tense of the irregular verbs ‘to buy’, ‘to bring’ ‘to think’.

PLEASE REMEMBER that the suggested sound replaces all four letters of OUGH. But you must pronounce the letter ‘t’ when it appears.

WORDS WITH AUGH:

These words are similar to the OUGH words but they produce only TWO sounds. Some words in this category are not very common. They are good words, but not very common (for example: haughty, distraught, onslaught).

1.  Sounds like O of Tottenham:

daughter, naughty, slaughter, taught*, caught*

*past tense of irregular verbs ‘to teach’ and ‘to catch’.

All words deriving from these words also have the sound of O of Tottenham: granddaughter, naughtier, the naughtiest etcetera.

2.  Sounds like AFF (A of Arsenal):

laughter, to laugh, laughing, a laugh, draught.#

This sound is AFF and nothing else – anywhere in the world. It replaces ALL four letters of AUGH.

And again, you must pronounce the letter ‘t’ when it appears.

# In American English ‘plough’ is simplified to ‘plow’ and ‘draught’ to ‘draft’.

But even in American English they do not change 'drought' to 'drout'.

These American versions are very sensible because they are phonetics (they sound as they appear) for English-speaking people.

Have you read our article Strange British Surnames?

You can now hear the correct pronunciation of these names,

and some places, in my video Strange British Surnames on YouTube

See following links for more English:

Comprehension Tests

Cloze Exercises

Exercises in the Use of English

Synonyms Exercises.

Also, the TEACHERS section has English versions of advanced level articles.

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