Thread by @colingorrie

English spelling is a cruel joke

Why does ‘gh’ stay silent in “daughter” but sound like an ‘f’ in “laughter”?

The thing is, English spelling is actually 100% logical — for the Middle Ages

Here’s how the 'gh' sound disappeared from English, and left chaos in its wake…🧵

In the beginning, the letters ‘gh’ meant something consistent

“Laughter”, “daughter”, “night”, “through” — all used to have the same sound

It was a harsh throat sound — like the ‘ch’ in Scottish “loch” or German “Bach”

But around 1400 AD, some people stopped saying it…

Around 1400, people started making mistakes with ‘gh’.

Some started writing “nyte” for “night” — showing ‘gh’ had no sound.

They also started adding ‘gh’ into the spelling of words which never had the ‘gh’ sound before — so “delite” became “delight”.

The chaos was seeping in…

It wasn’t the same everywhere — the ‘gh’ sound hung around for longer in some places than others.

But by 1569, some dialects had completely lost the ‘gh’ sound.

In other dialects, the ‘gh’ sound remained — for them, the ‘gh’-less versions of words were barbarous...

Another change was going on at the same time — the harsh ‘gh’ sound made at the back of the mouth began shifting to an ‘f’ sound.

Educated speakers resisted this change too — they saw it as vulgar and clownish.

But they wouldn’t hold out for long.

By 1625, even educated writers were using ‘f’ sounds in words like “laugh", “rough”, and “draught” — just like we do today.

For a few words, the version where ‘gh’ sounded like ‘f’ was so popular that we’ve forgotten that they ever had a ‘gh’ to begin with.

One word whose ‘gh’ became an ‘f’ is “dwarf”

Dwarf used to be pronounced more like “dwargh”, with that harsh ‘gh’ at the end

But today there’s no trace of that old ‘gh’ — even in the spelling.

Other words were more controversial…

Sometimes, two versions of the same word competed — some people said “daughter” with a silent ‘gh’, while others said it with an ‘f’.

Even into the 17th century, it seemed like the forms with ‘f’ might take over entirely.

We might be saying “thruff” instead of “through”...

By 1750, things had settled down to how things are today — every ‘gh’ has just one pronunciation.

‘Gh’ is either silent or sounds like ‘f’, depending on the word.

But if you don’t know the word already, there’s no way to guess what it will be — total chaos…

The reason for all this chaos is simple: London

London was the centre of life in England starting in the late Middle Ages — it attracted people from all over

These newcomers to London spoke in different ways — as a result, the speech of London became a mix of different forms…

Sometimes the version of a word where ‘gh’ sounded like ‘f’ won out — other times the version with silent ‘gh’ won

After hundreds of years of arguing over how ‘gh’ should be pronounced, we finally had an answer

Unfortunately for students of English, the answer was “it depends”.

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