How to pronounce 'ough'

How do I pronounce thee? Let me count the ways!

Once upon a time a Frenchman was travelling via the Channel Tunnel from Paris to London (OK, so the time wasn’t all that long ago). As his English was not all that good, he spent the time reading a book of tips on the language, and as the train approached St Pancras he found the page that read:

“tough” proounced tuff

“though” pronounced tho

“through” pronounced throo

“thorough” pronounced thurru

“cough” pronounced coff

“bough” pronounced bow

“lough” pronounced loch

As he got off the train and walked into the London streets he looked up at a theatre billboard and saw “The Sound of Music – Pronounced Success”, and that was when he shot himself!

So that makes seven. For the uninitiated, a lough is to an Irish person what a loch is to a Scot (i.e. a lake or a sea inlet), and is pronounced the same way, that is to say with a slightly guttural sound that is a cross between “lock” and “shhh”.

I have to sympathise with the unfortunate (and mythical) Frenchman, because there are no rules that can help the learner of English to know which pronunciation applies when. You just have to learn these things as you go along.

It is place names that are most likely to trap the unwary. For example, Slough (pictured above) is a town to the west of London that is known to most Brits for only two things. It is the setting for Ricky Gervais’s modern classic “The Office”, and it was once famously pilloried by the poet John Betjeman in the lines:

“Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!

It isn’t fit for humans now.

There’s isn’t grass to graze a cow.

Swarm over, Death!”

Unkind maybe, but at least it taught a generation that the place wasn’t called Sluff.

During a visit to Baltimore I once met a young American lady who said that she was about to visit my country for a conference at a town called Lowborow.  It took a while before I realised she was actually going to a place that is only few miles from where I live, called Loughborough. I had never appreciated before that this name would cause anyone a problem, but it actually has two “ough” syllables which are pronounced differently, namely numbers one and four on my list above.

I therefore had a pleasant half hour teaching this delightful person to say “Luffburru”.

As to why English presents such eccentric difficulties, that would take a long and boring time to explain. Suffice it to say that ours is a language that has evolved over many centuries, based on many complex roots, with the sole purpose, it would seem, of baffling those poor benighted ones who have had the misfortune to be born elsewhere.

© John Welford