We all know there are a lot of exceptions to pronunciation in English, but perhaps no combination of four letters has produced as much confusion and frustration as the notorious “ough”. Yes, I think you are lucky that you only have one word to learn for “the”, but if you are an English learning trying to pronounce these “ough” words, I don’t envy you. I remember also having problems learning to spell these in my grade school phonics class.
There are a total of six different ways to pronounce this combination. (Crazy that it is more than the number of letters it contains!) I have broken them up into different groups, depending on the sound. I’ll use the phonetic description, for those who find that helpful. Some of the audio pronunciations are covered in the funny video below, but you can hear me saying them here:
These words sound like the “uff” in “stuff”:
- tough – \ˈtəf \
- rough
- enough
This word rhymes with “off”:
- cough – \ˈkȯf \
This word rhymes with “blue”:
- through – \ˈthrü \
These words rhyme with “not”:
- ought – \ˈȯt \
- bought
- fought
- brought
This word uses the “ow” sound like “now” and “cow”:
- drought – \ˈdrau̇t \
These words have a long “O” sound as in “show” or “no”:
- though – \ˈt͟hō \
- thorough
If these seem difficult to keep straight, don’t worry! You are not the only one! See this funny clip from a very popular show in the United States from the 1950’s called I Love Lucy, where Ricky Ricardo is stumbling over all of these -ough words
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