Darrell71 wrote:I've always assumed it was Howton or Hooton! :lol:
Moonraker wrote:Darrell71 wrote:
I pronounce cough as huff, so I was quite confused there for a second.
I think you've confused us all now!
SorryNotSorry :twisted:
This is quite confusing - certainly I'd never have even thought of the possibility of anyone pronouncing "cough" as anything other than "coff" (or the first half of "coffin").
I do sometimes wonder if there is any unambiguous way of discussing the pronunciation of words without resorting to the International Phonetic Alphabet.
Yes, I know that is unambiguous and standardized, and was designed precisely for this purpose - but really, how many understand it other than professional linguists? I wonder how many have ever had this experience:
You look up a name or word in Wikipedia and either have no idea how to pronounce it, or else you are wondering which of two pronunciations you know is preferable. You see the name given in the phonetic alphabet, don't understand it, and look up the alphabet somewhere else. You then laboriously try to find each character in the alphabet, and try to put them all together in your mind to see how the word should be pronounced - but you give up in the end, confused by all the details, your head full of static caused by trying to decipher it.
There surely has to be a better way than that....
Regards, Michael.