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Asked by 9eltu to Andrew, Ash, Gem, Paige, SJ on 25 Jun 2012.
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SarahJayne Boulton answered on 25 Jun 2012:
Here’s what I reckon to this…
The word ‘dough’ has it’s roots in indo-european part word ‘-dheigh’ said like ‘deyh’ which means ‘kneaded’ or ‘to knead’ (as you do to make bread y’know)
THe word ‘rough’ however has its roots in the part word ‘rukh-‘ meaning ‘shaggy’ or ‘hairy’ which is germanic in origin. the ‘-kh’ sound is a throat sound, like how scottish people would say at the end of the word ‘loch’.
Becasue english is a compound language made up of loads of different spoken languages, the vocal sound of these two words was preserved as the language developed. However, because there wasn’t one person in charge saying how different sounds should be written down, the different sounds were denoted by the same letters despite sounding different.
It’s just one of those things that makes English one of the most difficult languages in the world to learn!
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Gemma Staite answered on 25 Jun 2012:
Or why not say “row”?
Like SJ states, it all comes down to the origins of the words. There are so many things like this in the English Language.
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Ashley Cadby answered on 28 Jun 2012:
Because they would kick me out of Krispy creme if I asked for a duffnut
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Paige Brown answered on 29 Jun 2012:
English is a very silly language I guess! We have all sorts of weird spellings… probably because some humans just decided to make them up and say them certain ways out of habit!
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