Is 'ough' the Trickiest Sound in English? | English Spelling & Prounciation Lesson

29,485 views ・ 2021-09-20

BBC Learning English


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

00:07
Hi. Look, I'm really sorry about this, but as you probably know,
0
7440
5360
00:12
the way we spell things in English is not always the way we say them.
1
12800
3760
00:19
Take these four letters, for example, o u g h.
2
19440
4760
00:25
How do we pronounce them? Well, it all depends.
3
25280
4120
00:29
Put a 't' at the end and we have'ought'.
4
29400
4560
00:33
So, o u g h is pronounced [aw]
5
33960
3640
00:37
But put a 't' at the beginning and it's 'tough'.
6
37600
4000
00:41
o u g h is now pronounced [uff].
7
41600
6200
00:47
So far so bad!
8
47800
400
00:48
But now let's add one more letter to make 'though'.
9
48200
3640
00:51
o u g h is [o]
10
51840
3840
00:55
Again, one more letter, r, makes 'through'.
11
55680
5520
01:01
o u g h is [ew]
12
61200
3360
01:04
Can we keep going?
13
64560
1040
01:05
Yes we can.
14
65600
1360
01:06
  Let's add another letter, o, we have thorough.
15
66960
5400
01:12
o u g h is now [u].
16
72360
4520
01:16
  OK, add one more letter and,
17
76880
2920
01:19
actually that's it. We can't extend any further with just one letter.
18
79800
3240
01:24
But you see the point,
19
84160
1520
01:25
  the same letters pronounced five different ways.
20
85680
3000
01:30
Five!
21
90000
960
01:31
  You know that's not the end of it.
22
91000
2960
01:34
Depending on what part of the English speaking world you come from,
23
94000
3680
01:37
there are around 11 different ways of pronouncing o u g h.
24
97680
4920
01:43
Eleven!
25
103480
1560
01:45
Why is this?
26
105360
1360
01:46
Well, a long time ago, the way we spelt things wasn't really fixed.
27
106720
5280
01:52
So people wrote things down the way they thought they sounded.
28
112000
4800
01:56
Gradually over time, the spellings became fixed,
29
116800
3800
02:00
particularly after the printing press was invented in the 15th century.
30
120600
5040
02:05
Unfortunately, although spellings were fixed,
31
125640
3400
02:09
something called The Great Vowel Shift was happening.
32
129040
3960
02:13
This was a period of about two hundred years
33
133000
2600
02:15
when for a number of reasons, the way we pronounced vowels in English
34
135600
3880
02:19
completely changed.
35
139520
2280
02:21
I know, crazy, huh?
36
141800
2920
02:24
  So how does this help us today?
37
144720
4640
02:29
Well, to be honest, not at all.
38
149360
4560
02:33
But don't panic.
39
153920
1920
02:35
There aren't actually that many o u g h words anyway,
40
155840
3760
02:39
and most of those are quite common. So you may already know them.
41
159600
4920
02:44
Are there any rules if you come across a word you don't know?
42
164520
5040
02:50
Well, some guidelines, but not really rules.
43
170040
4800
02:54
If a word ends in o u g h t then it is more than likely pronounced [awt]:
44
174840
6920
03:01
thought, bought, brought, fought, ought, nought, sought.
45
181800
8440
03:10
If it's two syllables and ends in o u g h,
46
190240
4080
03:14
it's probably [u]: thorough, borough.
47
194320
5040
03:20
Other than that, the best way of finding out the pronunciation
48
200640
3440
03:24
is to use a dictionary because with 11 different possibilities,
49
204080
4600
03:28
you might guess the right one, but the odds are not great.
50
208680
3600
03:33
For example, and this is completely true, when researching this topic,
51
213720
4680
03:38
I came across an English word I hadn't seen before. S o u g h.
52
218400
7320
03:47
It's a verb which means to make a soft whistling sound
53
227040
4280
03:51
like the wind blowing through the trees.
54
231320
2920
03:57
I said a soft whistling sound!
55
237240
4480
04:03
That's better.
56
243840
2200
04:06
  But how to pronounce it?
57
246040
2040
04:08
Was it sough like dough, sough like cough, sough like rough,
58
248080
8360
04:16
sough like plough, sough like through, sough like hiccough?
59
256440
6280
04:24
I guessed sough like cough.
60
264000
3040
04:27
Was it a good guess?
61
267040
1840
04:29
Nope!
62
269840
1040
04:30
Annoyingly it can actually be pronounced two different ways,
63
270880
4640
04:35
but neither of them the way I guessed.
64
275520
1880
04:38
If you want to know the correct way, you'll have to do what I did.
65
278520
4360
04:42
Look it up. It's the best way. Bye.
66
282880
4000
04:48
You didn't really think I'd go without telling you.
67
288160
3320
04:51
If you've stayed this long. I think you deserve the answer.
68
291480
3320
04:55
It's sough like plough or even sough like rough.
69
295880
6320
About this website

This site will introduce you to YouTube videos that are useful for learning English. You will see English lessons taught by top-notch teachers from around the world. Double-click on the English subtitles displayed on each video page to play the video from there. The subtitles scroll in sync with the video playback. If you have any comments or requests, please contact us using this contact form.

https://forms.gle/WvT1wiN1qDtmnspy7