nwr (and everyone else who responded to the ghoti question),
I know "ghoti" is just a funny example of the quirky pronunciation rules of the English language.
On a side note, now that we're on the subject of pronouncing the "gh" combination, I'd like to use this stage to tell every English-speaker how to pronounce the name Van Gogh. It's not, as a lot of you seem to think, "van goff", with "van" pronounced like the word used to denote a small bus-like vehicle, and "goff" ending in an f-sound. The name literally means "from [the German town of] Gogh".
The Dutch word "van" in this context translates as "from". "Van" is pronounced with an a-sound roughly like that in the British pronunciation of "dance", but a little shorter.
"Gogh" is pronounced, in Dutch at least, as if you have almost ingested an insect which is now clinging tightly to your epiglottis and which you are desperately trying to expel from your vocal apparatus. Both g's have a distinctly guttural quality to them, and the h plays no role worth mentioning.
If this didn't make things clear, it has at least in all probability cleared some throats.
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.