How to Pronounce GH in English | Hard G, Silent GH | Pronunciation Lesson

Let's get started.

Let's take a list of words.

ghost

spaghetti

straight

enough

high

longhand

Now if we take a look at that list

the first thing you can notice

is that the letters 'gh'

can be placed in the beginning of a word,

in the middle of a word,

or at the end of a word.

And as you can hear,

the sound is different.

Now let's get to it together.

'ghost' is the first word.

Now what is the sound what can you hear?

What you can hear very clearly is this 'g' sound.

'ghost' it's called a hard 'g'.

Most of the time

when you have the letters 'g'  'h' at the beginning of a word

it will be pronounced /g/ a hard 'g'.

The second word is 'spaghetti'.

Now the 'gh' is in the middle of the word

and what sound can you hear?

Again, you can hear that very hard 'g' sound.

spaghetti

So when 'gh' is in the middle of a word

it is sometimes pronounced /g/

but then if we take the third word,

straight

again 'gh' is also in the middle of the word

but the sound is different.

It's what we call a silent 'gh'.

'straight' you can't actually hear anything

okay so sometimes,

it's when gh is in the middle  of the word it's silent.

Now our next example is a very interesting case.

It's the word 'enough'.

And as you can see

'gh' is at the end of the word

and what can you hear?

Can you hear a 'g' sound or a silent 'gh'?

Well, no, actually you can hear an 'f' sound

enough

So sometimes with some words in English,

'gh' is placed at the end of the word

and is pronounced 'f' like enough.

Our next example is the word 'high'

and again 'gh' is at the end of a word

but the sound is not an 'f' sound this time

it's a silent gh

high

so sometimes 'gh' placed at  the end of a word is silent.

And our very last example was 'longhand'.

Now with longhand, as you know I'm sure it's a compound word 

so it's an association of two different words it's a special case.

So in this case, the sound is not 'gh' 

the two letters are separate because you first have the word long 

and then you have the word hand so you can actually hear both sounds 

in a separate way longhand.

Okay.

So I hope you remember when 'gh' is at the beginning of a word

most of the time it's a hard 'g' sound like ghost.

When it's in the middle most of the time it's silent

like 'straight' but not all the time

we have examples of a heart  'g' sound like spaghetti.

When it's at the end of the word,

most of the time it's silent like high

but not all the time we have example...  examples sorry of an 'f' sound like enough. 

And finally we have compound nouns which are a special case, okay. 

Well, let's now review other words and find out how this 'gh' sound is pronounced.

Let's get started guys please repeat after me  

it's very important that you practice.

This first category is for the hard 'g' sound

spaghetti

aghast

ghost

ghetto

ghoul

ghastly

Ghana

Afghanistan

Let's continue with the 'f' sound this time.

Repeat after me.

enough

cough

laugh

rough

tough

draft

And now let's look at words  containing the silent 'gh'.

It's a big list.

Now listen very carefully

and repeat after me.

ought to

drought

thought

slaughter

straight

slay

thigh

naughty

caught

daughter

eight

height

weight

neighbor

might

bright

light

night

tight

high

sigh

bought

although

thought

through

though

And now a few examples of compound nouns.

Now because compound nouns are two separate nouns,

you can clearly hear the sounds of the letter 'g'

and the letter 'h'.

Okay, repeat after me.

foghorn

jughead

longhand

egghead

bigheaded

And finally, let's practice four sentences.

Now remember, be very careful

listen very carefully

and try to remember how these  'gh' sounds are pronounced.

Repeat after me.

The ghost had a light cough.

My neighbor had enough spaghetti.

His daughter went to the ghetto at night.

We ought to laugh at the neighbor.

Great job guys.

One final word I want to talk to you about

is the word hiccup.

Now most of the time the  word hiccup is spelled c-u-p

okay the American spelling

and it's pronounced hiccup

but if you ever go to the UK,

you might see the old British spelling.

It's spelled with 'gh'

and it's still pronounced hiccup.

It's the same pronunciation it's the p sound

but the spelling is different  so that's an interesting one.

Thank you for watching this video,

I hope you now have a better sense

of how to pronounce these words

containing the letters 'g' and 'h'.

Don't hesitate to watch this video again

and please keep practicing.  Practice makes perfect. 

Thank you for watching my video  and see you in the next videos.