A far Kraai

English - As she are spoke or red

By Murray Stewart (old photo)

People who think it is still acceptable to spell trough, through, dough and tough roughly the same way – despite them sounding totally different – should be ashamed of themselves. Purists of the English language might disagree, but in the Land of the Angry Orange, they’ve dispensed with pretentious traditions and simply spell these words phonetically: troff, thru, doe and tuff.

So where did this ‘ough’ fixation come from – this blatant disregard for logic, both written and spoken? Well, without mentioning the war, the Saxons, Angles and Jutes had a big say in it when – under cover of darkness – they invaded Britain during the 5th century from the area around today’s Hamburg and Denmark.

They convinced the local barbarians, wearing blue face-paint and knickerless miniskirts, to drop their coarse, guttural Gaelic dialects, which they maintained were both spelled and spoken with a complete disrespect for the alphabet and frazzled epiglottises. Rather adopt this new language, which they admitted was spelled rather ridiculously, but when spoken was far less painful on the ear and throat.

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