utterance of the ''gh'' in ''thought''

Bill   Sun Dec 11, 2005 9:54 pm GMT
I was listening to a recording of a certain Scot speak, and I heard them actually pronounce the ''gh'' in ''thought'' as /x/. Does anyone know why? It sounded very strange to me.
Travis   Sun Dec 11, 2005 9:57 pm GMT
This is because the loss of /x/ never occurred in Scots, and Scots has had a good deal of information on the pronunciation of Scottish English, and one aspect of such is that many Scottish English dialects have /x/ today.
Brennus   Mon Dec 12, 2005 7:45 am GMT
The /gh/ sound in words like 'enough, night, light and thought' was once pronounced in England too.

Older forms and pronunciations often persist in outlying areas and Scotland is an outlying area if you consider England, especially southern England to be the focal point.

This is a world-wide phenomenon. For example, the /sh/ sound that Old Spanish had (written as x) survives in Galician and Portuguese.
An outlying dialect is still capable of developing new sounds too; Pontic and Cypriot Greek have an /sh/ sound which never existed in the speech of Greece.