the way we spell things in English is not always the way we say them.

Take these four letters, for example, o u g h.

How do we pronounce them? Well, it all depends.

Put a 't' at the end and we have'ought'.

So, o u g h is pronounced [aw]

But put a 't' at the beginning and it's 'tough'.

o u g h is now pronounced [uff].

So far so bad!

But now let's add one more letter to make 'though'.

o u g h is [o]

Again, one more letter, r, makes 'through'.

o u g h is [ew]

Can we keep going?

Yes we can.

  Let's add another letter, o, we have thorough.

o u g h is now [u].

  OK, add one more letter and,

actually that's it. We can't extend any further with just one letter.

But you see the point,

  the same letters pronounced five different ways.

Five!

  You know that's not the end of it.

Depending on what part of the English speaking world you come from,

there are around 11 different ways of pronouncing o u g h.

Eleven!

Why is this?

Well, a long time ago, the way we spelt things wasn't really fixed.

So people wrote things down the way they thought they sounded.

Gradually over time, the spellings became fixed,

particularly after the printing press was invented in the 15th century.

Unfortunately, although spellings were fixed,

something called The Great Vowel Shift was happening.

This was a period of about two hundred years

when for a number of reasons, the way we pronounced vowels in English

completely changed.

I know, crazy, huh?

  So how does this help us today?

Well, to be honest, not at all.

But don't panic.

There aren't actually that many o u g h words anyway,

and most of those are quite common. So you may already know them.

Are there any rules if you come across a word you don't know?

Well, some guidelines, but not really rules.

If a word ends in o u g h t then it is more than likely pronounced [awt]:

thought, bought, brought, fought, ought, nought, sought.

If it's two syllables and ends in o u g h,

it's probably [u]: thorough, borough.

Other than that, the best way of finding out the pronunciation

is to use a dictionary because with 11 different possibilities,

you might guess the right one, but the odds are not great.

For example, and this is completely true, when researching this topic,

I came across an English word I hadn't seen before. S o u g h.

It's a verb which means to make a soft whistling sound

like the wind blowing through the trees.

I said a soft whistling sound!

That's better.

  But how to pronounce it?

Was it sough like dough, sough like cough, sough like rough,

sough like plough, sough like through, sough like hiccough?

I guessed sough like cough.

Was it a good guess?

Nope!

Annoyingly it can actually be pronounced two different ways,

but neither of them the way I guessed.

If you want to know the correct way, you'll have to do what I did.

Look it up. It's the best way. Bye.

You didn't really think I'd go without telling you.

If you've stayed this long. I think you deserve the answer.

It's sough like plough or even sough like rough.