# Pronounciation of furlough



## luitzen

I noticed that the word furlough in several newspaper articles appeared to have the same meaning as the Dutch word 'verlof'. Even though it's similar in form, the spelling of the word suggests to me that it has a different origin (false friends). So I looked up the word on Wiktionary and it said that it is indeed derived from Dutch verlof. The Wiktionary article, however, also noted that the pronounciation is /ˈfɜː(ɹ).ləʊ/, so without the -f on the end. This made me wonder the following things: How long has furlough been used in English? Why is -gh not pronounced as -f as in laugh? And if it is a loanword, why isn't the spelling verlof used? It's not uncommon for French loanwords to use the original French spelling, why isn't this the case for Dutch loanwords? I could understand the latter for words which have been loaned a long time ago, such as schooner, keelhaul, boss, Brooklyn, coleslaw, etc., but not for more recent words such as apartheid, Afrikaans, aardvark, wildebeest, Boer, etc.


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## heypresto

Each of these words ends with 'ough', and they are all pronounced differently: though, through, bough, enough, cough, lough, borough, hiccough . . . 

Looking for any logic in this is probably futile.


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## Hau Ruck

One thing I can offer that _may_ answer this (it very well may not!).  English speakers are _notorious_ for butchering other native language's words and 'adopting' them as their own. In AmE, it's heard quite often with (Mexican) Spanish. 

This very well could be what we have here. English is a hodgepodge of words. Most of our culinary words are from Romance (Latin) languages, yet we don't pronounce most of them in the same way as they 'should' be.


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## entangledbank

It does have an odd history. The early forms with /f/ recorded in the _OED_ are _vorloffe_ 1631, _fore-loofe_ 1637, _foreloff_ 1749. We have _furlogh_ in 1657 or before, but we can't know its pronunciation. Then we get _furlow_ in 1658 or before, and 1706. The usual problem with _-ough_ is that it involves earlier English /x/ disappearing or changing to /f/, but this word seems to have been imported as spoken from Dutch, then played around with a bit, and its /f/ was possibly removed before it was ever re-spelt with _gh_. Rather strange, in fact.


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## ewie

Here's my stab at reconstructing its progress:
Dutch _verlof_
> English _verlof _/ˈverlɒf/
> /ˈvɜ:rlɒf/
[ooh! that word sounds like _cough_, I'll spell it accordingly]
> _verlough_
[ooh! that word looks like it sounds like _though_, I'll pronounce it accordingly]
> /ˈvɜ:rləʊ/
> _verlough/vurlough_
[mysterious change of first consonant sound]
> _furlough
_/ˈfɜ:rləʊ/

Simple, really.  As far as English spelling goes.

(I always feel with OED citations that the best you can say of them is, e.g. "Someone spelt this word this way at least once in 1649")


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## luitzen

Ewie, the change from v- to f- is not mysterious; the pronounciation of v- in Dutch is f-. The change from e to u can also be explained by the adoption of English orthography for the word. For -lof the story is different; a small change in the pronounciation of the o (to make it sound like ough in tough) is all what is needed to make it an "English" word.

In the Netherlands we have the WNT (Dictionary of the Dutch Language) which describes all Dutch words since 1500 and WFT (Dictionary of the Frisian Language) which describes all Frisian words since 1800. Both these dictionaries (and some others) are freely accessible through the internet. I understand that the Oxford English Dictionary is the authority on English, but I have not been able to access it freely through their website. Are there any similar English dictionaries which are freely accessible through the internet?


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## Hau Ruck

Try this one.


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## berndf

ewie said:


> Here's my stab at reconstructing its progress:
> Dutch _verlof_
> > English _verlof _/ˈverlɒf/
> > /ˈvɜ:rlɒf/
> [ooh! that word sounds like _cough_, I'll spell it accordingly]
> > _verlough_
> [ooh! that word looks like it sounds like _though_, I'll pronounce it accordingly]
> > /ˈvɜ:rləʊ/
> > _verlough/vurlough_
> [mysterious change of first consonant sound]
> > _furlough
> _/ˈfɜ:rləʊ/


I'd rather think something like this: /fɛrlɔf/ >/fɔrlɔf/ > /fʌɹlɔ:/ >/fɝloʊ/ (> /fɜ:ləʊ/). The /f/ became mute quite early. The <gh> was added much later, long after /x/ disappeared. See here.


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## CapnPrep

berndf said:


> The <gh> was added much later, long after /x/ disappeared.


I'm not sure I follow you: much later than what? The OED (the original one) already cites the form _furlogh_ in one of the earliest attestations (_a_1657). Compare _vorloffe_ (1631), _fore-loofe_ (1637), and _furlow_ (_a_1658). The form _foreloff_ can still be found a century later (1749).


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## berndf

CapnPrep said:


> I'm not sure I follow you: much later than what? The OED (the original one) already cites the form _furlogh_ in one of the earliest attestations (_a_1657). Compare _vorloffe_ (1631), _fore-loofe_ (1637), and _furlow_ (_a_1658). The form _foreloff_ can still be found a century later (1749).


My mistake. I misread the passage in etymonline I linked to. So, /fʌɹlɔ:/ and /fʌɹlɔf/ must have existed side by side between something like 1650 and 1750. Would you agree?


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## Walshie79

If it was borrowed between c.1550-1650, as seems likely, that's exactly the time when native English -gh words were undergoing the shift away from /x/ to variously /f/ and zero consonant: two or three pronunciations probably existed side by side for the same word for at least 100 years. So this word had /f/ when first borrowed, but was treated as though it was an original /x/ word and developed accordingly. Almost certainly some people were wont to pronounce it with /x/, as well as the vowel-final version which prevailed in the end.

A more recent analogy is _juggernaut, _borrowed by British English when postvocalic /r/ was in the process of being lost; and treated as though it was a word that originally had /r/.


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## berndf

Walshie79 said:


> Almost certainly some people were wont to pronounce it with /x/


In 1657, the year of the first attested spelling with <gh>, the phoneme /x/ was already lost, wasn't it?


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## Walshie79

berndf said:


> In 1657, the year of the first attested spelling with <gh>, the phoneme /x/ was already lost, wasn't it?


 
Younger speakers yes, though there would have been a few older ones born in the 16th C still around who used /x/. By then -gh was an established way of spelling /f/ from original /x/, so these older speakers would likely have analysed it as an /x/ word.


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## berndf

Walshie79 said:


> Younger speakers yes, though there would have been a few older ones born in the 16th C still around who used /x/. By then -gh was an established way of spelling /f/ from original /x/, so these older speakers would likely have analysed it as an /x/ word.


You seem to assume that the loss of /x/ happened right at the end of the 16th century and not in the early parts of the century. I consider this quite unlikely given the fact that already Shakespeare rhymed _delighted_ with _invited_ (Sonnet 141).


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## Forero

berndf said:


> You seem to assume that the loss of /x/ happened right at the end of the 16th century and not in the early parts of the century. I consider this quite unlikely given the fact that already Shakespeare rhymed _delighted_ with _invited_ (Sonnet 141).


I do wonder how pronunciations of _ight_ might have compared with pronunciations of final _ough_.

How do they compare in present-day Scots?


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## berndf

_-ight_ (Scots _-icht_) is /-Ixt/, depending on dialect [-Ixt] or, as allophonic variant of /x/ after a high/near high front vowel, [-Içt]. The modern long /i:/ in English is due to compensatory lengthening. In Scots, both variants occur, i.e. _licht_ [lIxt] and [lIçt]; the former concurs with the pronunciation in modern Dutch and the latter with the pronunciation in modern German.


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## Forero

berndf said:


> _-ight_ (Scots _-icht_) is /-Ixt/, depending on dialect [-Ixt] or, as allophonic variant of /x/ after a high/near high front vowel, [-Içt]. The modern long /i:/ in English is due to compensatory lengthening. In Scots, both variants occur, i.e. _licht_ [lIxt] and [lIçt]; the former concurs with the pronunciation in modern Dutch and the latter with the pronunciation in modern German.


How about the Scots handling of final _ough_ or _ogh_? Does it tend to disappear, or come out as [f] in different words than in English?


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## berndf

Forero said:


> How about the Scots handling of final _ough_ or _ogh_? Does it tend to disappear, or come out as [f] in different words than in English?


English _though_ - Scots_ thoch_ (compare German _doch_).

Right now, I can't think of the example of _-ough_ being derived from OE. -_ūh_. But since Scots, like the related Northumbrian, never underwent the_ ū>ou _shift (e.g. in _hūs>house_), I would assume _-ūch_ where in some dialects [u:] is fronted to [y:].


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## luitzen

How is ch actually pronounced in Scottish?


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## berndf

As I said, [x] like in Dutch. In some dialects with allophonic [ç], as in German:





berndf said:


> In Scots, both variants occur, i.e. _licht_ [lIxt] and [lIçt]; the former concurs with the pronunciation in modern Dutch and the latter with the pronunciation in modern German.


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## luitzen

So it depends on dialect whether it's prounounced as [x] or [ç] in Scottisch? Are there any other sounds used as well?


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## berndf

luitzen said:


> So it depends on dialect whether it's prounounced as [x] or [ç] in Scottisch? Are there any other sounds used as well?


Not that I know of.


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## berndf

*Moderator note: The language Luitzen referred to as "Scottish" is obviously Scots and not Scottish Gaelic. Discussion of these terms is off-topic here and has been moved to a new thread Scots, Scottish English and Scottish Gaelic.*


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