Ghoti is a creative 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 (), using these sounds:
gh, pronounced as in enough or tough ;
o, pronounced as in women ;
ti, pronounced as in nation or motion .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 ("martian", "patient", "spatial"). The expected pronunciation in English would sound like "goaty" , not "fish".
History...
Jens Bannmann
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