Insomnia

What does one do in the depth of night when one wakes up and stares in the darkness at the inside of one’s eyelids? Well, old English teachers lie there and obsess on the vagaries of English spelling and pronunciation. How, I ask myself, can any non-English speaking person learn to read, write, or pronounce English when we have so many spelling and pronunciation anomalies? I think of “though” and then add a “t” to make “thought.” Okay, two different vowel sounds for the “ou” (“oh” and “aw”) with the “gh” silent. Then I add an “r” to make “through” and I now have an “oo” sound. Now I find a diphthong in “bough” and “sough” (which can be pronounced as either “sow” or “suff” and is obviously related to “sigh”). I heave a deep sigh and go on to “cough” and “tough,” with vowel sounds like “aw” and “uh” and the “gh” so longer silent but sounding like a rough “eff.” And all this is only the tip of the iceberg of the English spelling conundrum. Don’t even get me started on the “esh” phoneme in English. I tried, successful finally, to get back to sleep. Although it was rough, I thought it through, fought for sleep, and then soughed like a bough in a midnight breeze.