Last month in this space, I noted that Washington had become the fourth state to remove all sexist language from its statutes. For example, whenever the word “fisherman” appeared in the law, it would have to be replaced by “fisher.”
I want to know why it wasn't replaced with “ghotiol.”
This might look like a typo, but because of the bizarre pronunciations of English words, there's an argument to be made that “fisher” and “ghotiol” should be pronounced the same way.
Here's how the word “ghotiol” could break down: The “gh” has an “f” sound, as in tough. The “o” has an “i” sound, as in women. The “ti” has an “sh” sounds, as in convention. And the “ol” has an “er” sound, as in colonel.
English learners hate this about our language. Working at the Carnegie Center, I meet a lot of Spanish-, French-, and even Swahili-speakers, and I often hear questions like this: Why does “through” rhyme with “crew” when “thorough” rhymes with “furrow?”
I usually shrug and try to empathize. But there is an answer to the larger question of why English is so difficult to learn. It's not really a phonetic language. Each letter may have several possible sounds, and each sound may be created by several different letters. So any time an English learner sees a new word, he or she can’t be sure how it’s pronounced.
An anonymous poet once wrote about the quirks of English pronunciation. Here’s an excerpt that reminds native English-speakers to be sympathetic to our English-learning friends.
We speak of a brother, and also of brethren/ But though we say mother, we never say methren./ Then the masculine pronouns are he, his and him/But imagine the feminine she, shis and shim.