"tough", "rough", "though" and "borough" all come from Old English, without any ... | Hacker News

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		tomjakubowski on April 17, 2023 \| parent \| context \| favorite \| on: Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wr... "tough", "rough", "though" and "borough" all come from Old English, without any French influence. The wackiness in pronouncing "ough" is sadly not predictable from any set of rules and as you'd probably expect varies between dialects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ough_(orthography)

_npe3 on April 18, 2023 [–]

"at least eight pronunciations in North American English and nine in British English, and no discernible patterns exist for choosing among them."

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