Just based on how often I notice someone mispronounce a word without realizing it (or have done so myself and realized it later). Statistically I’m probably still doing it with some word.

  • Dicska
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    1 year ago

    You CAN pronounce it fish, but you can also just simply not pronounce it.

    GH is pronounced _ like in high.

    O is pronounced _ like in jeopardy.

    T is pronounced _ like in potpourri.

    I is pronounced _ like in receive.

    Therefore, ghoti is completely silent.

        • samus12345
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          1 year ago

          Lacquer. (Which I believe is the only word in English with a silent Q. Proper nouns don’t count.)

          • Dicska
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            1 year ago

            Do you mean stuff like acquire? There are a good bunch of ‘cq’ words.

            • samus12345
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              1 year ago

              No, the C is silent in “acquire.” Otherwise, it’d be pronounced “akire.”

    • samus12345
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      1 year ago

      T is pronounced _ like in potpourri.

      Kind of a cop-out, since that’s a straight-up French loanword. “Soften” would be better. Or “often,” if not for the fact that it’s so commonly mispronounced.

      • Dicska
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        1 year ago

        True! I just remembered that there was a way to make the whole word silent but didn’t remember the T bit so I looked it up. This was the first example. Soften is much better!