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A few days ago, a friend and I were discussing how every "rule" of English spelling or pronunciation has an exception, and every exception has an exception as well. Then I brought up the rule of a ph cluster equaling an f sound (as in phonetic, elephant, morph, etc.) as a pronunciation rule that didn't have any exceptions I could think of. Is this a true hard-and-fast rule or does it have some exceptions as well? I'm not counting abbreviations such as pH scale.

Nicole
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    How about aphelion (one of the accepted pronunciations, anyway)? Of course, there's always uphold as well. – Robusto Apr 06 '15 at 22:29
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    Your rule should probably mention morpheme boundaries. –  Apr 06 '15 at 22:43
  • Does onamatopeia(?) count? If so, "phish"! – HarryCBurn Apr 06 '15 at 23:04
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    @lpodman: I always thought "phish" was a homophone of "fish". Is it not? – herisson Apr 07 '15 at 00:48
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    I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it's a pointless "list" question – FumbleFingers Apr 07 '15 at 01:50
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    You should have asked only the ones that start with "ph". – ermanen Apr 07 '15 at 02:41
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    I wasn't asking for a list; I was just asking if there were any exceptions. – Nicole Apr 07 '15 at 04:08
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    This isn't a list question, it's a simple yes/no question asking for an example. – Araucaria - Him Apr 07 '15 at 08:34
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    Are there any where the two letters are in the same syllable? – KSFT Apr 07 '15 at 12:13
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    If it were true that “every ‘rule’ of English spelling or pronunciation has an exception”, it would be an exceptionless rule on English spelling itself and thus invalidate itself. Also, I am quite confident that I one find a rule without exception by making it sufficiently vague (e.g.: a always corresponds to a vowel), overly specific (e.g.: rst is always pronounced the same) or exclude something sufficiently absurd (e.g.: t is never pronounced like a). – Wrzlprmft Apr 08 '15 at 08:21
  • All those words which are pronounced with p and h separately have some vowel sounds before p and after h. –  Apr 08 '15 at 05:11
  • @sumelic Yes, they are homophones. – TylerH Apr 08 '15 at 13:58
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    Trivial but certainly the easiest: pH value (from chemistry) ;). – dreamer Apr 08 '15 at 14:16
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    @Mr.ShinyandNew安宇, Given that this is a more general question and has a much better answer, I would rather see that question closed as a dup of this one. – Hellion Apr 08 '15 at 19:05
  • @dreamer Reread the last sentence of the question: "I'm not counting abbreviations such as pH scale." – Nicole Apr 09 '15 at 17:15

9 Answers9

63

The exceptions come in two categories:

  • Greek words that were originally pronounced with an "f" — diphtheria, diphthong, ophthalmology, phthisis — but have come to be pronounced with a "p" by no process I understand.
  • Compound words — uphold, saphead, peephole — that are just a word ending in "p" run up against a word beginning with an "h".

Neither of those really feel like exceptions: mispronunciations that have become accepted and two words being treated as one.

Then there is aphelion. Arguably, that's a compound word and a mistake. By analogy with apogee and apastron, it should be apohelion: "apo" ("from") + "helion" ("sun").

Several people brought up "Stephen", which is often pronounced like "Steven". Eh, I think we should play with Scrabble rules: no proper names.

Finally, there is an example that will really blow your minds: phthalate. The ph- is silent.

Hellion
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Michael Lorton
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  • A few dictionaries have admitted "Phad Thai", but alas, they all spell it incorrectly (by standard rules of Thai transliteration) "Pad Thai". – Lee Daniel Crocker Apr 07 '15 at 00:12
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    Why do you say aphelion is a mistake? It looks like a properly formed Greek word, even if the Greeks did not use it? The -o should be elided before a vowel, and hêlion begins with a vowel (the h sound is not a consonant in classical Greek). – Cerberus - Reinstate Monica Apr 07 '15 at 02:42
  • @Cerberus -- so, shouldn't it be *apelion"? – Michael Lorton Apr 07 '15 at 03:55
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    @Malvolio: the p got aspirated before a rough-breathed vowel, turning it into the single sound "ph". – herisson Apr 07 '15 at 04:32
  • @Malvolio: As Sumelic said, the h sound disappears (in the translitteration of Greek into Latin/English) after most consonants, but not after those consonants that the Greeks felt could be aspirated: b/p/g/k(=c)/d/t/r. – Cerberus - Reinstate Monica Apr 07 '15 at 11:55
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    @Cerberus Within Greek itself, though, that would have given αφηλιον, which would not give English ap + helion, but afelion; so it's a ‘mistake’ in that sense. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Apr 07 '15 at 13:03
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    @JanusBahsJacquet: Well, we normally do not translitterate the letter phi as f, so it would normally be aphelium. F or k in translitterations from Greek is relatively modern and uncommon. I can't think of a single instance of f in a Greek word borrowed by the Romans: f was a Latin letter. The only argument I see to defend your f is that the Greek ending -on is kept, which is otherwise (normally) adjusted to -um. – Cerberus - Reinstate Monica Apr 07 '15 at 16:24
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    Both /f/ and /p/ are labial consonants (formed by one or both lips). This means that it's fairly easy for one to change into the other. There are phonetic rules that describe how but, unfortunately, I don't have a link for that. – CJ Dennis Apr 07 '15 at 16:26
  • @Cerberus I was talking about pronunciation—it would still be written the same, but if it had been a ‘real’ Greek word, it would have had an actual phi, which would have been pronounced in English as an f. The only reason the ph in aphelion is pronounced as [ph] instead of [f] is that it's not a natural Greek word, and whoever coined it obviously didn't know how Ancient Greek phonetics worked. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Apr 07 '15 at 16:30
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    Because ph followed by th is hard to say. Phenolphthalein survives though. – OrangeDog Apr 07 '15 at 17:04
  • @JanusBahsJacquet: Ohh you were being on topic, Jeesh. If you are talking about the pronunciation, then I agree: pronouncing it like /aphelion/ in English is weird, as opposed to /afelion/. – Cerberus - Reinstate Monica Apr 07 '15 at 17:31
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    I say phthalate like "fthalate". – Nicolas Barbulesco Apr 08 '15 at 08:10
  • @NicolasBarbulesco that was my point. phthalate is still /f/ while the other Greek words (diphtheria, etc.) in the answer are not. – OrangeDog Apr 08 '15 at 13:55
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    Who pronounces diphthong or diphtheria with a p? I've never heard that and the dictionary says f too. Especially diphthong: it's a technical word and people who use it should know how to pronounce it. – Szabolcs Apr 08 '15 at 17:56
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    @Szabolcs Sadly, many, many people pronounce those words with [p]. Diphthong is not that technical of a word—lots of people who aren't linguists know it, but don't know how to pronounce it. I'm guessing the mispronunciation comes from never hearing the word, just reading it, and then just missing one of the h’s… or something. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Apr 08 '15 at 20:40
  • @OrangeDog — I say diphtheria, diphthong, ophthalmology, phthisis with [-f-]. Like in french. How would one say otherwise? – Nicolas Barbulesco Jul 03 '15 at 21:32
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    @Nicolas A lot of people say diptheria, dipthong, opthalmology, thisis/tisis. (Note that the last one is then either just [ˈθaɪsɨs] or [ˈtaɪsɨs], not *[ˈpθaɪsɨs]. I don’t think anyone says it like that.) – Janus Bahs Jacquet Sep 19 '15 at 23:35
  • @OrangeDog Interesting comment. Completely backwards from my own personal distribution. I pronounce all these ⟨phth⟩ words with [fθ], including phthalate; but phenolphthalein is sufficiently tongue-twistery for me that I would probably make it either pheno-phthalein or phenol-thalein. Something’s got to go there. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Sep 19 '15 at 23:39
33

Also :

  • flophouse
  • loophole
  • peephole
  • uphill

and Stephen.

Community
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Shepherd -- it's technically a compound word, but a pretty old one.

herisson
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diphtheria -- and then any compound word like uphold or saphead.

Michael Lorton
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    Although, words like "diphtheria" and "diphthong" are commonly heard with either /p/ or /f/, so although they can be pronounced with /p/, following the rule ph = /f/ will also yield a valid pronunciation. – herisson Apr 06 '15 at 22:36
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    My first thought was, well, some people are just pronouncing "diphtheria" and "diphthong" wrong, in slavish adherence to an inapplicable "rule". Turns out, no. They derive from διφθέρα ("leather", from the tough membrane that can form in the throat of a diphtheria sufferer) and δίφθογγος ("two sounds"). δίφ is, and is pronounced, "dif". The more you know. – Michael Lorton Apr 06 '15 at 23:39
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    Note that although modern Greek pronounces phi as /f/, classical Greek pronounced it as an aspirated /p/. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phi. – Keith Apr 07 '15 at 00:10
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    Weird. I've never heard anyone pronounce the ph in diphtheria, diphthong, or ophthalmology as a /p/. Is it a regional thing to mispronounce those? I've lived in the American Midwest, Northeast, and Northwest. – dg99 Apr 07 '15 at 21:46
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    @dg99 -- they were all spelled with a φ (phi) in the original Greek, which in modern Greek is pronounced /f/, but I am informed by Keith that in ancient Greek it was an aspirated p, confusingly written in IPA as /pʰ/ (the difference between aspirated and unaspirated p is the difference between the sounds in "pill" and "spill" -- which to me is no difference at all). Arguably, the common pronunciations of diphtheria, diphthong, ophthalmology are faithful to the original, and it is all the other words (photo, phono, sophomore) that are being pronounced "wrong". – Michael Lorton Apr 08 '15 at 00:30
  • @Malvolio: Well, they're pronounced the way they're pronounced. Calling it "wrong" is like saying that the pronunciation of algae as /ˈældʒiː/ is "wrong". And the pronunciation with /p/ is inconsistent with Ancient Greek in any case due to the use of /θ/ rather than /tʰ/, and of course the vowels are all wrong... It seems to me exceedingly silly to call either form "faithful to the original," which is in any case of dubious value. There are no more Ancient Greeks around for us to learn pronunciation from, or to be bothered by how we pronounce English words with Greek roots. – herisson Apr 08 '15 at 08:53
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    @dg99 You've never heard anyone say "Op"thalmologist before? That's the only pronunciation I've ever heard. – TylerH Apr 08 '15 at 14:02
  • I'm not a native english speaker, but o-P-thalmology seems very odd. Roman languages even spell it o-F-talmologia, same goes for di-F-teria. Funny that diphthong is spelled "di-P-tongo" in Spanish, maybe they have different origins? – PeerBr Apr 08 '15 at 15:05
  • @TylerH To be fair, I can't recall ever hearing diphtheria said aloud (maybe on some BBC/CNN news report?), and my experience with diphthong has been mostly in the context of choral rehearsals (where folks are more likely than most to care about proper enunciation). Ophthalmology I hear a lot (problems with my eyes), but I guess mostly from people who work in an ophthalmology department. Perhaps I just don't "get out" enough. :) – dg99 Apr 08 '15 at 16:18
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    @Keith That was hardly known by the people who borrowed these words from French or coined them based on their knowledge of Ancient Greek and Latin texts. The historical evolution of the Greek pronunciation of the aspirated plosives is something we've only pieced together more recently. As far back as the 3rd or 4th centuries AD, the Greeks already pronounced them as fricatives, and phi in particular was (normally/always?) borrowed into Latin as f, not p. So while it's true that the earliest pronunciation was aspirated plosive, that's not the reason for this little English mess. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Apr 08 '15 at 20:52
  • @JanusBahsJacquet Interesting. Whilst not true for diphtheria, I wonder if there are any words in English that have a continuous usage that fossilised the old pronunciation via some circuitous route [ Probably not?] – Keith Apr 09 '15 at 23:24
  • @Keith -- Well, the spelling of two preserves its original pronunciation (something like "twah"), and the pronunciations of many two-related words, twin, twist, between, twain, twiddle, twine, have remained the same. – Michael Lorton Apr 10 '15 at 19:25
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The following words come to mind:

  • "Stephen" - A masculine given name pronounced /ˈstiːvən/. e.g. Stephen Crane, the writer; Stephen of Blois, king of England.
  • "Stephens City" - A small town in Virginia, USA, pronounced /ˈstiːvənz/

I might add words such as "uphold" (a junction of two words), "nephew" (which can be pronounced /'ne.viu/ in the U.K.), and ophthalmic, ophthalmology, etc, (which can be pronounced with an "f" sound too.) I don't think these would answer the OP, though.

EDIT - While I was writing my answer, the word "Stephen" was added to one of the answers.

Centaurus
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    That's interesting about nephew. I've never heard it pronounced with any other way than ne-(ˌ)fyü. – Nicole Apr 07 '15 at 00:53
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    Perhaps it's a regional pronounciation, by I've always heard Stephen pronounced with much more of an 'f' sound than Steven with a 'v'. – jamesqf Apr 07 '15 at 03:12
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    @jamesqf: I've never heard Stephen pronounced with an 'f' and I'm a native English speaker who's been to most English speaking countries. Can you find us a YouTube like or something? – hippietrail Apr 07 '15 at 14:52
  • @hippietrail: Sorry, but I don't do YouTube, or video of any sort, really, and in fact don't even have speakers on my computers. – jamesqf Apr 07 '15 at 18:29
  • Yeah and I've always heard James pronounced as if the m was an n... – pazzo Apr 08 '15 at 00:16
  • @hippietrail -- how do you pronounce "George Stephanopoulos"? I think most the /v/ Steves are "Steven" or "Stephen", while the /f/ Steves are "Stephan" (with an a), but not all. – Michael Lorton Apr 08 '15 at 00:36
  • @Malvolio: The Greek names in Australia are always with /f/. The pan-European name with many spelling variants including "Stephan" are all with /f/. Stephen/Steven/Steve are all with /v/. I've never heard of Stephan becoming Steve but would consider that a nickname. I've never heard in English /steef/ as a male name but /stef/ as a female name in not rare, usually a short form of "Stephanie". – hippietrail Apr 08 '15 at 02:06
  • I don't know how people would expect /f/ in Stephen to be pronounced that differently than a /v/ anyway, I think it is more in the ear of the beholder than the person saying it. Say them fast and they are identical, it is clear how people misheard and one became the other in their mind. – JamesRyan Apr 08 '15 at 16:18
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Ones that haven't been mentioned:

  • upholstery
  • upheld
  • upheaval

I took this further and ran the following fairly simple command in Linux that tries to solve this problem, I've commented each part of the command on the right in the interest of readability:

look . | grep ph |         # List words and filter out ones with ph.
while read word ; do       # Set variable $word to each word.
   espeak -qx "$word" |    # Print phonetic pronounciation of the word.
      grep -q f ||         # If it doesn't have an f sound in it, 
         echo "$word"      # then print the word.
 done
  • alphol
  • Alphonist
  • Alphonse
  • Alphonsine
  • Alphonsism
  • Alphonso
  • alphorn
  • alphos
  • alphosis
  • archshepherd
  • creephole
  • cupholder
  • haphazard
  • haphazardly
  • haphazardness
  • lamphole
  • loophole
  • nonupholstered
  • nympholepsia
  • nympholepsy
  • nympholept
  • nympholeptic
  • overshepherd
  • peephole
  • sheepherder
  • sheepherding
  • shepherd
  • shepherdage
  • shepherddom
  • shepherdess
  • shepherdhood
  • Shepherdia
  • shepherdish
  • shepherdism
  • shepherdize
  • shepherdless
  • shepherdlike
  • shepherdling
  • shepherdly
  • shepherdry
  • shepherdry
  • Stephen
  • sulpholeate
  • sulpholeic
  • taphole
  • Theraphosa
  • theraphose
  • theraphosid
  • Theraphosidae
  • theraphosoid
  • traphole
  • undershepherd
  • unshepherded
  • unshepherding
  • unupholstered
  • uphand
  • uphang
  • upharbor
  • upharrow
  • uphasp
  • upheal
  • upheap
  • uphearted
  • upheaval
  • upheavalist
  • upheave
  • upheaven
  • upheld
  • uphelm
  • uphelya
  • upher
  • uphill
  • uphillward
  • uphoard
  • uphoist
  • uphold
  • upholden
  • upholder
  • upholster
  • upholstered
  • upholsterer
  • upholsteress
  • upholsterous
  • upholstery
  • upholsterydom
  • upholstress
  • uphung
  • uphurl

Note that these results aren't perfect, its based on the phonetic information that the espeak program contains and also some slightly flawed logic that excludes words that have an 'f' in them. Like flophouse. I'd have to write a more sophisticated program to get better results.

Another interesting thing you can do is calculate is the number of ph words overall vs. the list above. There are 12,148 words in the dictionary I'm using with 'ph' in them and there are 87 words above. So only about 0.72% of ph words are not pronounced with an 'f' sound.

deltaray
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  • Cupholder... the answer to the OP's question is "yes, many." – keshlam Apr 07 '15 at 16:16
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    I don't think this worked very well. Many of these words DO have an f sound in them! Eg. Alphonse. Also do compound words really count? – JamesRyan Apr 08 '15 at 16:22
  • @JamesRyan Yes like I said, this isn't perfect, but it shows that there is potential there with additional work. Its also based on the phonetic information used by the espeak program, which could be incorrect. – deltaray Apr 08 '15 at 17:36
  • This is a website dedicated to the English language, and not about computer language or artificial intelligence. If the OP is asking for exceptions, you shouldn't include words where ph IS pronounced f, nor every imaginable variant of shepherd. Many of those "up" compounds are either archaic, rare or non-existent e.g. uphang, upharbour and upharrow – Mari-Lou A Apr 09 '15 at 01:32
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    @Mari-LouA O my bad I didn't realise that there weren't problems to be solved in english language such that a computer couldn't help out – deltaray Apr 10 '15 at 13:38
  • Not if those results prove false, no. How would you pronounce Alphonist? What is upharrow? Oh, and here's one your computer missed out: upheated, if uphearted exists, I don't see why not upheated. – Mari-Lou A Apr 10 '15 at 13:52
  • Snaphaunce add that one to your list. It's pronounced snap-hans – Mari-Lou A Apr 10 '15 at 14:06
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One more:
Haphazard: lacking any obvious principle of organization.

Pieter Geerkens
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Phthisis /'θaɪsɪs, 'taisɪs/ and derivative phthisic /'θɪzɪk,'tɪzɪk/.

But British dictionaries (apparently somewhat grudgingly) license /'(f)θaɪsɪs/, /'(f)θɪzɪk/ as well.

StoneyB on hiatus
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How about the confusing 'Phenolphthalein' where the first Ph is pronounced as an 'f' but not the second. (pronounced: Fenolthaleen). Pretty much a go to chemical in any laboratory....

James Upton
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