English is a crazy language
Secondary title: that F sound ph we all know this combination of letters makes an F sound. Always. Unless there are variations that I don't know about. phone - fone photo - foto pheromone - feromone. pharmacy - farmacy phantom - fantom philosophy - filosofy phraseology - fraseology but what about the gh combination? these two letters together do not always sound the same and do not always make that F sound. Placed at the beginning of a word gh is simply g . A "hard" g , not the softer gee . ghost ghoul gherkin ghetto Now and again it's a J as in Gillian (Jillian) or Geoffrey (Jeffrey) Placed in the middle of a word, or at the end, it's a totally different sound. In laughing or coughing it becomes an F laughing -larfing coughing - cofing yet coffin is not spelled c-o-u-g-h-i-n Gough Whitlam is not spelled Gof Whitlam slough is pronounced sluf bough - the tree branch - is a W sound; bow other gh words have other sounds; ...