Is it possible that there is only one English word of one syllable in which these letters* are pronounced 'er'? I can think of only one, but I cannot be sure because, sadly, the advanced OED search engine cannot search by number of syllables and there are 5,802 words in it containing 'our'.
“Try it again, General:
‘This urgent surge will purge the insurgent scourge’”
If you think this sort of discussion is boring, look HERE for a joke which is a source of much hilarity wherever top linguists foregather.
[*There must be a technical term in linguistics for a group of letters within a word; I thought it might be morpheme, but that's something else.]
9 comments:
As someone whose second language is English, I also find the difference in pronunciation between enOUGH and bOUGH quite fascinating!
English pronunciation can be a real challenge to the non-native speaker!
And don't forget thrOUGH and thOUGH.
Sorry, but I don’t understand that joke. Is it funny?
I’m not surprised; it is a bit arcane.
What you need to do if you have the time is to look up the technical terms mentioned, either in Ludwig Giesecke’s 'Glossar von Linguistik' or in 'Applied Linguistics for Dummies', and then you may get the point, though I wouldn’t bet on it. And no, it isn’t funny.
'Honour' and 'colour'?
...and hundreds of other words like that.
I said words of one syllable.
Do try to keep up.
Oh yes.
Soz.
This was a new word to me and I cannot say I was ecstatic to learn it.
I looked it up here:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=soz
Get your drift.
'nuff said.
Laters.
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