Ghoti

Creative re-spelling of the word "fish" From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ghoti is a creative English respelling of the word fish, used to illustrate irregularities in English spelling and pronunciation.

Explanation

The word is intended to be pronounced in the same way as fish (/fɪʃ/), using these sounds:

The key to the phenomenon is that the pronunciations of the constructed word's three parts are inconsistent with how they would ordinarily be pronounced in those placements. To illustrate: gh can only resemble f when following the letters ou or au at the end of certain morphemes ("tough", "cough", "laugh"), while ti would only resemble sh when followed by a vowel sound. The expected pronunciation in English would sound like "goatee" /ˈɡoʊti/, not "fish".[1]

Both of the digraphs in the spelling – gh and ti – are examples of consonant shifts, the gradual transformation of a consonant in a particular spoken context while retaining its identity in writing. Specifically, "nation" reflects the softening of t before io in late Latin and early French,[2] while "enough" reflects the softening of a terminal g in West Germanic languages.[3] In contrast, North Germanic languages such as Danish and Swedish retain a harder pronunciation in their corresponding words (nok and nog).

History

The first confirmed use of ghoti is in a letter dated 11 December 1855 from Charles Ollier to Leigh Hunt. On the third page of the letter, Ollier explains that his son William, who was 31, had "hit upon a new method of spelling Fish." Ollier then demonstrates the rationale, "So that ghoti is fish."[4][5][6] Ollier's work was contemporaneous with that of spelling reformer Alexander J. Ellis, whose Plea for Phonotypy and Phonography contained several similar examples.[5]

An early known published reference is an October 1874 article by S. R. Townshend Mayer in St. James's Magazine, which cites the letter.[6]

Another relatively early appearance of ghoti was in a 1937 newspaper article,[5] and the term is alluded to in the 1939 James Joyce experimental work of fiction Finnegans Wake.[7]

Ghoti is often cited to support English spelling reform, and is often attributed to George Bernard Shaw,[8] a supporter of this cause. However, the word does not appear in Shaw's writings,[5] and a biography of Shaw attributes it instead to an anonymous spelling reformer.[9] Similar constructed words exist that demonstrate English idiosyncrasies, but ghoti is one of the most widely recognized.[1]

Notable usage

  • In Finnegans Wake (published in 1939), James Joyce alludes to ghoti: "Gee each owe tea eye smells fish." ("G-H-O-T-I spells 'fish'.") (p. 299). On p. 51, that fishabed ghoatstory may also allude to ghoti.
  • In the artistic language Klingon, ghotI’ /ɣoˈtʰɪʔ/ is the proper word for "fish".[10]
  • In "An Egg Grows in Gotham", a 1966 episode of the television series Batman, the villain Egghead uses "Ghoti Oeufs" as the name for his caviar business, and Batman explains the reference to Robin.[11]
  • Ghoti Hook is a 1990s Christian punk band.
  • Ghoti has been used to test speech synthesizers.[12] The Speech! allophone-based speech synthesizer software for the BBC Micro was tweaked to pronounce ghoti as fish.[13] Examination of the code reveals the string GHOTI used to identify the special case.
  • In the Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game, there is a series of Fish-Type cards called "Ghoti".[14]
  • The second track of Lupe Fiasco's 2022 album Drill Music in Zion is titled "Ghoti".[15]
  • Vocaloid producer NILFRUITS uses the line "ghoti, ghoti" in the transcript accompanying the sung lyrics of "fish, fish" in his 2018 song Hungry Nicole.[16]

See also

References

External links

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