Pronunciation

In this dictionary slashes (/../) bracket phonetic

pronunciations of words not found in a standard English

dictionary. The notation, and many of the pronunciations,

were adapted from the Hacker's Jargon File.

Syllables are separated by dash or followed single quote

or back quote. Single quote means the preceding syllable is

stressed (louder), back quote follows a syllable with

intermediate stress (slightly louder), otherwise all syllables

are equally stressed.

Consonants are pronounced as in English but note:

ch soft, as in "church"

g hard, as in "got"

gh aspirated g+h of "bughouse" or "ragheap"

j voiced, as in "judge"

kh guttural of "loch" or "l'chaim"

s unvoiced, as in "pass"

zh as "s" in "pleasure"

Uppercase letters are pronounced as their English letter

names; thus (for example) /H-L-L/ is equivalent to /aych el

el/. /Z/ is pronounced /zee/ in the US and /zed/ in the UK

(elsewhere?).

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

*r fur, insert (only in stressed

syllables; otherwise use just "r")

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 (often written with an upside-down `e'). The schwa

vowel is omitted in unstressed syllables containing vocalic l,

m, n or r; that is, "kitten" and "colour" would be rendered

/kit'n/ and /kuhl'r/, not /kit'*n/ and /kuhl'*r/.

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.

(1997-12-10)