A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman

Nope, this isn’t a Tinder profile (if only the quality of available man was that good). It’s the start of a sentence containing some of the different ways you can say the letters ‘ough’. The full phrase is this:

A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed.

This is one of the many reasons I salute anyone who manages to learn English as a foreign language. Because there are at least eight, possibly nine, ways you can pronounce ‘ough’ (sources differ as to exactly how many – it also depends if you count place names or not).

The most common pronunciations are:

‘oh’ as in though (rhymes with toe)
‘uff’ as in rough (like ruffle)
‘off’ as in cough (or coffee)
‘ooh’ as in through (rhymes with boo)
‘ort’ as in thought (as in torture, which hopefully this blog post won’t be)
‘ow’ as in bough (or wow, who knew the English language was so ridiculous?).

Why, oh why are there so many?

The short answer is that English words come from all over the bloody place – Latin, Greek, German, Old Norse… you name it, we’ve probably nicked a word from it. So even though two words might be spelt similarly, chances are they’ve come from two completely different roots. Add to that the fact that some of them will have originally been pronounced the same way but changed over time, plus the fact that English is stupid, and you soon realise that all bets are off pronunciation-wise.

Adding insult to injury

Let’s take the word ‘slough’. It has three pronunciations, depending on what you mean:

sl-uff (pronounced like ‘stuff’): to shed something (usually skin, ew)
sl-ew (rhymes with ‘stew’): a load of mud AKA a swamp
sl-ow (rhymes with ‘cow’, not ‘low’): the place in England where ‘The Office’ was set.

So you could say the snake sloughed off its skin in the slough near Slough. But why would you?

Speaking of places, ‘ough’ turns up in the names of lots of British towns and villages as well. And they’re all pronounced differently, of course – sometimes even in the same word. For example, there are three parishes in Milton Keynes called (1) Woughton, (2) Loughton and (3) Broughton. And the ‘ough’ is pronounced differently in each one: (1) ‘uff’, (2) ‘ow’ and (3) ‘ort’. And let’s not forget the ridiculousness that is Loughborough. There are two ‘ough’s in that, and the first is pronounced ‘uff’ while the second is ‘oh’. Anyone who’s never heard these spoken out loud doesn’t stand a chance.

Give us a clue

Nope, sorry, I’ve got nothing. Unlike lots of grammar-type things, there aren’t any cutesy mnemonics or shortcuts to this one. Or, god forbid, any actual logic. You just have to know the answer.

Well, that’s all clear as slough, sorry mud. After all that confusion, let’s end with a poem (because it’s always nice to end anything with a poem). This one’s called ‘O-U-G-H’ and is by a guy called Charles Battell Loomis, an American author who was born in 1861. Bonus points if you read it out loud in a comedy French accent.

I’m taught p-l-o-u-g-h
Shall be pronouncé “plow.”
“Zat’s easy w’en you know,” I say,
“Mon Anglais, I’ll get through!”
My teacher say zat in zat case,
O-u-g-h is “oo.”
And zen I laugh and say to him,
“Zees Anglais make me cough.”
He say, “Not ‘coo,’ but in zat word,
O-u-g-h is ‘off.’”
Oh, Sacre bleu! Such varied sounds
Of words makes me hiccough!
He say, “Again mon frien’ ees wrong;
O-u-g-h is ‘up’
In hiccough.” Zen I cry, “No more,
You make my t’roat feel rough.”
“Non, non!” he cry, “you are not right;
O-u-g-h is ‘uff.’”
I say, “I try to spik your words,
I cannot spik zem though.”
“In time you’ll learn, but now you’re wrong!
O-u-g-h is ‘owe.’”
“I’ll try no more, I s’all go mad,
I’ll drown me in ze lough!”
“But ere you drown yourself,” said he,
“O-u-g-h is ‘ock.’”
He taught no more, I held him fast,
And killed him wiz a rough!