Pronunciation Guide
Pronunciation keys are provided in the jargon listings for all entries
that are neither dictionary words pronounced as in standard English nor
obvious compounds thereof. Slashes bracket phonetic pronunciations,
which are to be interpreted using the following conventions:
- Syllables are hyphen-separated, except that an accent or back-accent
follows each accented syllable (the back-accent marks a secondary
accent in some words of four or more syllables). If no accent is
given, the word is pronounced with equal accentuation on all syllables
(this is common for abbreviations).
- Consonants are pronounced as in American English. The letter `g' is
always hard (as in "got" rather than "giant"); `ch' is soft
("church" rather than "chemist"). The letter `j' is the sound
that occurs twice in "judge". The letter `s' is always as in
"pass", never a z sound. The digraph `kh' is the guttural of
"loch" or "l'chaim". The digraph 'gh' is the aspirated g+h of
"bughouse" or "ragheap" (rare in English).
- Uppercase letters are pronounced as their English letter names; thus
(for example) /H-L-L/ is equivalent to /aitch el el/. /Z/ may
be pronounced /zee/ or /zed/ depending on your local dialect.
- Vowels are represented as follows:
- a
- back, that
- ah
- father, palm (see note)
- ar
- far, mark
- aw
- flaw, caught
- ay
- bake, rain
- e
- less, men
- ee
- easy, ski
- eir
- their, software
- i
- trip, hit
- i:
- life, sky
- o
- block, stock (see note)
- oh
- flow, sew
- oo
- loot, through
- or
- more, door
- ow
- out, how
- oy
- boy, coin
- uh
- but, some
- u
- put, foot
- y
- yet, young
- yoo
- few, chew
- [y]oo
- /oo/ with optional fronting as in `news' (/nooz/ or /nyooz/)
A /*/ is used for the `schwa' sound of unstressed or occluded vowels
(the one that is often written with an upside-down `e'). The schwa
vowel is omitted in syllables containing vocalic r, l, m or n; that is,
`kitten' and `color' would be rendered /kit'n/ and /kuhl'r/, not
/kit'*n/ and /kuhl'*r/.
Note that the above table reflects mainly distinctions found in standard
American English (that is, the neutral dialect spoken by TV network
announcers and typical of educated speech in the Upper Midwest,
Chicago, Minneapolis/St.Paul and Philadelphia). However, we separate
/o/ from /ah/, which tend to merge in standard American. This may
help readers accustomed to accents resembling British Received
Pronunciation.
Entries with a pronunciation of `//' are written-only usages. (No, UNIX
weenies, this does not mean `pronounce like previous pronunciation'!)
