Pronunciation Guide

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:

  1. 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).

  2. 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).

  3. Uppercase letters are pronounced as their English letter names;
     thus (for example) /H-L-L/ is equivalent to /aych el el/.  /Z/
     may be pronounced /zee/ or /zed/ depending on your local dialect.

  4. 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'!)