Hi I was just trying to find a "trick" for how to explain the OUGH sound in English.
How to pronounce it. Listen to this. T-O-U-G-H . How do you pronounce that? If
you said "tough" Well done! ok but now just add one letter - an H after the T
T-H-O-U-G-H (you'd expect it to be THUF but no it's THOUGH
OK add one letter add an R after the H T-H-R-O-U-G-H - THROUGH
add one letter an O after the H T-H-O-R-O-U-G-H - THOUROUGH
Completely different that's insane. It's crazy I didn't invent the English language I'm just
here to explain it a little but as you can see English is not a phonetic language. So
what you shouldn't do is try to pronounce these words without looking them up in the
dictionary or finding how to pronounce them online first. I've heard some of my students
trying to do that they'll see a word like c-o-u-g-h and they'll try to pronounce it.
They'll look at it and say. Cough...cough.......you see the struggle inside. It's COUGH by the
way. It's not worth it.
In fact there are 10 ways to pronounce the OUGH. I know that because I just looked it
up on Wikipedia. Just to give you a few more examples
ROUGH (rhymes with cuff) this is your cuff by the way. DOUGH the stuff inside the bread
(rhymes with so). PLOUGH that's a machine to turn over the earth (rhymes with cow),
BOUGHT (rhymes with sort), HICCOUGH (rhymes with up). - although the Americans do spell
it with -CUP at the end which is much more logical.
So I'm afraid, there is no trick so just learn each word as it comes up don't waste your
time. Do something much more useful and more interesting with your time: Meet your friends,
go dancing, bake a cake, play the ukulele, fly a drone. Whatever floats your boat (that's
an expression, by the way, it means whatever is good for you.
ok
I'll finish with a poem for you.
OK see if you can pronounce this.
"The wind was rough along the lough as the ploughman fought through the snow, and though
he hiccoughed and coughed, his work was thorough."
Can you say that? OK thank you for watching and have a beautiful day.