Since English is the evolved product of the assimilation of many languages, it is impossible to provide prescriptive and immutable rules for its spellings.

For instance, here I show “ch” demonstrating three sound values: ch (like tj) – chin/chop, k – chasm/chaos, sh – champagne.

I require:
1. The identification of a letter cluster group which can represent 7 different sounds (5 are pure vowel sounds).
2. At least one word to demonstrate the use of each of these sounds. [If a given word may not be in my solution, I will accept a rhyming word that uses the letter cluster].

Note: That my spelling orientation is generally based upon Oxford English, this challenge should present more effort for a phonetic speller than one who uses American spellings.

[This was presented to me in my primary school years, many years ago, as a demonstration that while native English users may have difficulty, how much harder for those using it as a second language. I have also been careful that the cluster is not in the body of this text]

(In reply to re: A sentence containing 9? by brianjn)

The tetragraph ough represents (at least) 13 different sounds in the English language:

1. in thought as an open-mid back rounded vowel
2. in through as a close back rounded vowel
3. in borough as the mid-central vowel
4. in dough as the diphthong of the mid-central vowel gliding into the near-close near-back vowel
5. in plough as the diphthong of the open-front unrounded vowel gliding into the near-close near-back vowel
6. in cough as the open back rounded vowel + the labio-dental fricative [f]
7. in rough as an open-mid back unrounded vowel + the labio-dental fricative [f]
8. in hiccough as an open-mid back unrounded vowel + the bilabial plosive [p] (*a variant spelling of hiccup)
9. in hough as an open-mid back unrounded vowel + the dorsal velar plosive [k]  (*a variant spelling of hock)
10. in oughtlins as an open-mid back rounded vowel + the dorsal velar plosive [k] 
11. in lough as an open back unrounded vowel + the voiceless velar fricative [x] (*a variant spelling of loch)
12. in trough as an open-mid back rounded vowel + the voiceless dental non-sibilant fricative ('th')
13. in Coughlin as an open-mid back rounded vowel + the voiced velar plosive [g] 

*The words of variant spellings have maintained the pronunciation of the word to which they are a variant to. This was confirmed with various dictionaries that include the pronunciation of these words.  Many of the words have more than one pronunciation, and not all pronuncations for the tetragrahp in those words are represented here.

Ough is found to be used for each of the following sounds: "aw", "awf", "awg", "awk", "awth", "og", "oh", "ok", "okh", "oo", "ou", "uh", "uhf", "uhp".

As to the sentence allegedly containing 9 different sounds for the tetragraph, the heteronyms for in the word slough has at least three different pronunciations - yet, I did not find any pronunciation that was not already accounted for in the remaining set of words.  

Edited on May 18, 2012, 3:05 pm

Posted by Dej Mar on 2012-05-17 09:56:15