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Originally Posted By: The Pook
Originally Posted By: LukeJavan8


Here in the Northern Plains, a channel of water runoff, similar
to a canal, can be called a slough.

...and that'd be pronounced ...?


Yes, it is slu .


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Originally Posted By: LukeJavan8


Here in the Northern Plains, a channel of water runoff, similar
to a canal, can be called a slough.

Here we would perhaps call that a 'sluice' (rhymes with juice). Maybe where you are it is a corruption of sluice rather than coming from the word for a marshy bog, slough, by dropping off the sibilant sound from the end? (More often though we would call such a thing an irrigation canal or table drain, or race (if associated with mining)).

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Maybe where you are it is a corruption of sluice rather than coming from the word for a marshy bog, slough, by dropping off the sibilant sound from the end?

I doubt it. The dictionaries don't agree with you. There are many sloughs in California mainly in the delta region (link and link).


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Quote:
i]Maybe where you are it is a corruption of sluice rather than coming from the word for a marshy bog, slough, by dropping off the sibilant sound from the end?[/i]

I doubt it. The dictionaries don't agree with you. There are many sloughs in California mainly in the delta region ([url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slough_(wetland)]link
Thanks for the links, especially the one with the fantastic picture of the
Stockton Slough. The slough's here are also named, and, while not as large
as the pictured one, some carry small boats from one place to another.
And my dictionary agrees with you, but I am yet to check on-line ones.
Again thanks for the picture: really good.

Last edited by LukeJavan8; 12/29/08 04:58 PM.

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I have not read all the posts in this thread so I may be speaking out of turn. However, I am surprised that no one threw this at the group: GHOUGHPHTHEIGHTTEEAU

What does that spell phonetically?

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Originally Posted By: PastorVon
I have not read all the posts in this thread so I may be speaking out of turn. However, I am surprised that no one threw this at the group: GHOUGHPHTHEIGHTTEEAU

What does that spell phonetically?


It spells POTATO.

Here is the break down:

GH OUGH PHTH EIGH TTE EAU

If GH stands for P as in Hiccough
If OUGH stands for O as in Dough
If PHTH stands for T as in Phthisis
If EIGH stands for A as in Neighbour
If TTE stands for T as in Gazette
If EAU stands for O as in Plateau

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Originally Posted By: zmjezhd
... and that'd be pronounced ...?

I've only heard the /slu/ pronunciation used in the States.


I grew up in the central Mississippi River valley in southern Illinois. The Mississippi has many such sloughs (slu). Some are dead-ended; others are like linked ponds. In the 1840s and 1850s a series of large floods changed the channel of the Mississippi south of present-day Ste. Genevieve, Missouri, north of present-day Chester, Illinois. Prior to the 1840s, what is today Kaskaskia Island was a somewhat long peninsula of land between the Mississippi on the west and the Kaskaskia or Okaw River on the east. Following the floods, the Mississippi cut across the peninsula and took over the channel of the Okaw forming two very large 90 degree turns. Separating today's Kaskaskia Island which is still a part of Illinois from the State of Missouri is a series of sloughs (slu-s), nearly all of which are navigable with small craft.

By the way, a famous English novel includes a slough in its narrative, the Slough of Despond. I don't know if Bunyan pronounced it slu or sluff. The novel is *Pilgrim's Progress* and the author was John Bunyan.

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>I don't know if Bunyan pronounced it slu or sluff.

I don't know how Bunyan pronounced it either (or either), seeing as hough how Bunyan is still dead; but the OED pronounces it slow (rhymes with bough), sloo only as a dialect form, and refers to slew as a US or Canada spelling/pronunciation.

They drew near to a very Miry Slough... The name of the Slow was Dispond. - Bunyan (1678) [OED2]

NB: regarding the variable spellings in Bunyan - link

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Originally Posted By: PastorVon
By the way, a famous English novel includes a slough in its narrative, the Slough of Despond. I don't know if Bunyan pronounced it slu or sluff. The novel is *Pilgrim's Progress* and the author was John Bunyan.

Yes I did mention it above I believe. Bunyan probably pronounced it to rhyme with cow. Slew (IPA slu) seems to be dialectical North American for a canal. The English bog is a (IPA) slau.

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Originally Posted By: PastorVon

If GH stands for P as in Hiccough


Only those poor misguided folks at Lake Superior State University would spell hiccup like that.

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