I am sure you remember that famous old schoolyard saying I before E except after C.
If only it was that simple!
Unfortunately, “E” comes before “I” on several other occasions too.
Perhaps the saying should be changed to something more appropriate. Something like I before E except when you run a feisty heist on a weird, beige, foreign neighbour.
The I before E rule is just one example of the contradiction that is the English language. People like me who love nothing more than consistency in letters and sounds, are pushed over the edge when forced to think about words containing ough.
Ough words are the bane of my life! I often wonder how I would explain the rules for ough words to someone learning English. But there is just no hard and fast rule. In my perfect world, all words ending with ough would rhyme. But Through, Thorough, Though, Tough, Trough and Thought don’t rhyme at all! Wouldn’t it be so much easier if we could change them to Throo, Thurow, Tho, Tuff, Thawt and Troff? And while we are at it, let’s change rough, plough, slough, hiccough and cough too!
It is also beyond me how two words spelt the same can be pronounced so differently. For example:
“I wound a bandage around the wound.”
“The tear in the photo made me shed a tear.”
“When chased, the dove dove into the bushes.”
However, I think that is best left for another blog.
I will leave you with a poem I stumbled upon recently. Unfortunately, I am unable to credit the author as they are unknown. I like to think of them as an English teacher who just didn’t know how to explain our language’s idiosyncrasies!
I take it you already know
of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you
on hiccough, thorough, slough and through.
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps?
Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird.
And dead; it’s said like bed, not bead.
For goodness sake, don’t call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat,
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt)
A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, broth in brother.
And here is not a match for there,
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear,
And then there’s dose and rose and lose —
Just look them up — and goose and choose,
And cork and work and card and ward
And font and front and word and sword.
And do and go and thwart and cart —
Come, come, I’ve hardly made a start.
A dreadful language? Man alive,
I mastered it when I was five.
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