If it's true, and the report is really from New York, why is the text so obviously written by someone whose first language is not English ("He knows that his hen do all her last effort to produce this giant egg.")?

Richard Jones wrote:

A comedian on a talk show was giving an example of pronunciation. Take "gh" from "enough". Take "o" from "women". Take "ti" from "nation". You get "ghoti" pronounced "fish".

Not original with the comedian. It's often been attributed to George Bernard Shaw, but there are indications it was around before him (i.e., in the 1800s)...

d@nish wrote:

Why is "digit" spelled with a "g" and pronounced as "dijit"?

G followed by either E or I is often pronounced soft (gesture, gibberish, etc.). I don't know that there's a rule--except to say that a soft sound is typically the case when the word is borrowed/derived from Latin or one of its successor languages, which follow that rule (G followed by A, O, or U is hard; G followed by E or I is soft). "Digit" comes from Latin "digitalis" = finger. But there's no rule to tell you when a word is borrowed from Latin vs. being a Germanic/Anglo-Saxon word (get, give). The most basic words of the language are Germanic.