Ghoti is a creative English respelling of the word fish , used to illustrate irregularities in English spelling and pronunciation.
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).
In 1815, there were several examples of absurd spellings given in a book by Alexander J. Ellis, A Plea for Phonotypy and Phonography, which advocated spelling reform. However, ghoti was not among the examples, which were all relatively lengthy and thus harder to remember. [4]
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." [5] [4] [6]
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, [4] 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, [4] 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]