507: 'ought' Pronunciation Apr 28, 2016

There are nine different ways to pronounce ‘ough’ in English, and there is no single reason for this complication. Often, words containing 'gh' evolved from a single glottal sound which exists in German as 'ch', and depending on the frequency of usage, and regional accents, the spelling was constant, but pronunciation diverged. In other cases, words were adopted from other languages with different spelling rules, or in the case of 'hiccoughed' the spelling was changed on purpose, but not to match any sound. You can visit the Cambridge Dictionary website to listen to the nine pronunciations. http://dictionary.cambridge.org/