Hi again and welcome back to Seattle Learning Academy's American English pronunciation podcast.

My name is Mandy and this is our 205th episode.

How many of you are frustrated by trying to understand the pronunciation of the O-U-G-H spelling.

I'm sure many of you are.

Here's the trouble with the O-U-G-H spelling.

Its pronunciation is almost completely unpredictable.

In just the words, through, though, and thought, we hear three different

pronunciations, the O-O sound, the long O, and the AW sound. Then there are words like cough,

which has the same vowel sound as thought, but with an added F sound. The word enough also has an F sound

but with a different vowel sound than cough. Of all the words I've used as examples so far,

only one, the word thought, follows a predictable pattern. If there are so few patterns to follow,

how on earth can you learn these pronunciations? Don't worry, I'm here to help you.

In place of patterns, we'll use categories. Grouping words together is a good way to learn. Since I know many of you out there

are pronouncing these words incorrectly, I'd recommend reading the transcript while listening

to this episode so you can see the word I'm saying. I'll also provide symbols from the

international phonetic alphabet, so those of you who can read

sounds that way can see what I'm talking about. You can find this transcript by going to

pronuncian.com spelled P-R-O-N-U-N-C-I-N-C-I-N and clicking podcasts.

Then click on Episode 205.

Let's start with the known pattern and the word thought, which we pronounce with the A-W sound,

awe.

In the international phonetic alphabet, the symbol for this looks like a

...