How to pronounce "ough"

I must be very daft as I don't get it ! confused!

Precisely mrsmopp. It's a wonder how our children learn these rules x

I obviously didn't lol

I taught in Africa for five years, and unfortunately it was just a matter of learning each word as it came up. There aren't any rules because our spelling and pronunciation oddities are mostly historical. Luckily I had exceptionally bright pupils over there and I only ever had one girl who had spelling problems.

I love the poem. The joy of phonics lol

Tanith you just read it so the 2nd anf 3rd lines rhyme with line one.
don't be put off by the spellings - there are lots of ways to pronounce 'ough' as the poem shows.

An Australian backpacker accosted my son on the Tube and asked him the way to loogaburrooga.
After a while he worked it out.... Can you?

Loughborough?

My Dutch friend, when she first met her English husband, asked him how to pronounce 'ewe.' He told her it was 'eewee' so she continued to call it an eewee for some time, whilst he laughed like a drain at her expense they're divorced now!

When I was in Amsterdam with friends, we asked our taxi driver how to pronounce Van Gogh. There are so many mispronunciations in English and especially by the Americans who call him Van Go! The answer was very guttural but we were all Scots, so it was easy for us. Rhyme with loch, but the G at the beginning is also a guttural.

We were once asked how together to 'lannelly'
Turned out it was Llanelli

I remember when I worked in NZ as a buyer at a brush factory, The big machines were made in Keighley, and called Keighley machines, but the buggers insisted on pronouncing it Keeley. I told them how it should be pronounced, as I'm from near there, but they wouldn't believe me (pron Keethley).

My Hungarian penfriend came to visit once, we went for a drive round and went through there. She called it Kiggley!!

Thanks mrsmopp I get it now.

Thought you'd all like this; DD2 had to learn it in Year 3!!

I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you
On hiccough, thorough, laugh and through?
Well done! And now you wish perhaps
To learn of less familiar traps.

Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird.
And dead it's said like bed, not bead -
For goodness' sake don't call it 'deed'!
Watch out for meat and great and threat,
They rhyme with suite and straight and debt.

A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, broth in brother,
And here is not a match for there
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear,
And then there's dose and rose and lose -
Just look them up - and goose and choose.

And cork and work, and card and ward,
And font and front and word and sword,
And do and go and thwart and cart -
Come, come, I've hardly made a start!
A dreadful language? Man alive!
I'd mastered it when I was five.

That reminds me of the old question "How do you pronounce "ghoti?"
Answer "FISH"
"gh" as in "rough
"o" as in "women"
"ti" as in "lotion"
F-I-S-H!

eJC
Brilliant!