GH

Usually silent, occasionally /f/, and /g/ only at the start of a word. The single most unreliable consonant spelling in English.

Digraphs

gh DIGRAPH_GH_01

Irregular pattern · Low reliability · Common · Advanced · Reading

• Silent: night, high, though
• /f/ f: laugh, cough, enough
• /g/ g: ghost, ghetto

Where Wiggler teaches it: Skill 11: Advanced Patterns & Silent Letters

Child explanation

Gh is a strange pair. In night and high it says nothing at all. In laugh and cough it says /f/. You have to learn which words do which.

The rule

At the start of a word gh is /g/. Everywhere else it is either silent or /f/, and nothing in the spelling tells you which — the word has to be known.

What is really going on

gh once spelled a velar fricative /x/ that has been lost from standard English. In some words it disappeared without trace (night, light, though), and in others it hardened to /f/ (laugh, rough, cough, enough). The outcome was decided word by word in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and is not recoverable from the spelling. Word-initial gh is a separate case: those words are Dutch or Italian borrowings where gh simply spells /g/.

Why English does this

The gh in night is a fossil. It records a sound English speakers stopped making around six hundred years ago, preserved because printing fixed the spelling at roughly the moment the sound was disappearing.

Position in the word

• Beginning of a word — /g/. A very short list of borrowed words. For example: ghost, ghetto, gherkin.
• Middle of a word — Silent, as part of igh or ough. For example: night, light, bright, thought.
• End of a word — Silent or /f/, decided by the word. For example: high, though, laugh, cough, enough.

Examples

Easy examples

night, light, high, laugh, ghost

More examples

right, might, sight, fight, bright, eight, though, through, daughter, caught

Advanced examples

cough, rough, tough, enough, thorough, bough, drought

Exceptions

• gh as /f/: laugh, laughter, cough, rough, tough, enough, trough. The old velar fricative hardened rather than vanished in this set.
• gh as /g/: ghost, ghetto, gherkin, spaghetti. Word-initial, and borrowed from Dutch or Italian rather than inherited.

Do not teach it like this

"Gh is silent."

Laugh, cough, rough, tough and enough are all common, all early, and all /f/.

"Gh is usually silent, but in some words it says /f/. Those words have to be learned."

Teacher note

Do not teach gh as a decoding unit on its own. Teach igh as a trigraph (light, night, right) and ough as a high-variability family, and let the -augh and -ough /f/ words be learned as small sets. There is no rule here to give a child, and offering one is worse than admitting there is not.

Related rules

• IGH — igh — Three letters, one long i. Almost always followed by t, and one of the few places gh can be predicted with confidence.
• OUGH — -ough — At least seven pronunciations, and no rule at all. The clearest case in English where remembering the word beats applying a pattern.
• The AUGH family — -augh — Usually /ɔː/ with a silent gh — caught, taught, daughter. Laugh is the one that says /ɑːf/.
• Silent GH — igh / ough / aigh / eigh — The commonest silent letters in English, and the most confusing, because the same gh is /f/ in laugh and cough.

• Previous in Digraphs: QU — qu — Q never travels alone in English. Qu is one unit representing /kw/ — two sounds from two letters that must be read together.
• All reading rules

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