Re: Faux-phonetics (fuit: Conlang Article in the LA Times)

Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:

> BTW what do native speakers think of the system at
> <http://www.behindthename.com/pronunciation.php>? I have a
> beef with "UU French feu, UY French rue". I'd rather write
> [2] "eu" or "uh" and [y] "ue", since "uu" might just as well
>     be [U], [u] or [ju] and "uy" invites confusion with
>     their "ui" for [9y]. IIANM [2]/[9] -> [@]/[3:] and
> [y] -> [ju] would be the expected Anglicizations anyway.
>     FWIW "uy" might spell [ai] based on "buy, guy".
"UU" suggests /ju/ as in "vacuum [cleaner]"; of course "EU" isn't much
better since that's typically /ju/ in English, but at least [2] is
spelled "eu" in French, while "uu" doesn't represent [2] in any language
as far as I know. "UW" for /U/ is just plain weird, but there really
isn't a good way to represent it as distinct from /u/ (since "OO" is the
most obvious choice for both). And "UY" doesn't suggest anything at all
like /y/ ("UE" would be better).

> This is not a YAEPT, it's a EFPT (english faux
> phonetics thread).
Fauxnetics.

> FYI, faux-phonetics is far better than nothing at all for
> the instruction of linguistics innocents. If "KELL-e- born"
> and "gahl-AHD-ree-ell" saves us from 'Silly-born' and 'Galled-
> reel' I'm happy! :-)
Pronunciation guides are always useful. I know I mispronounced (in my
head) many names like "Celeborn", "Celebrant", "Eregion", etc. the first
time I read the book (before I read through the appendices).

> I'm actually trying to work out a
> system that would work for the Tolkien onomasticon.
> Unfortunately Sindarin has all of /ju/, /ui/, /y/ and
> marginal /y:/, and even /2/ in archaic forms. I can live
> with the supposition that Gondorans merged /y/ with /i/, but
> "MEEL" for _my^l streches beyond what I can stomach. I'm
> thinking of
>
> : /y/    "y"
> :        (and /j/ "y" too, I'm afraid -- /jy/ doesn't occur)
> : /y:/  "eu" or "ue"
> : /ju/  "yoo"
> : /ui/  "ooee" -- yeah, really!
>
> Actually /ai/ (and /ae/, which is only marginally distinct)
> and /x/ may be the hardest nuts to crack! How does "MEL-rokh
> UY-stahn" look to you Anglos? Based on what Tolkien said
> happened to /x/ in Gondor I propose "kh" word-finally and
> "hh" elsewhere.
Keep in mind that short o is /A/ in American dialects, so "rokh" is most
likely to be pronounced like the word "rock". Which is probably how
"Melroch" would be pronounced anyway without a pronunciation guide. And
no one's going to have any idea how to pronounce "UY" without a guide.

While some kind of faux-netic Ing-glish guide might be best for names of
characters in stories (where the readers can't be expected to know
linguistic symbols), it really annoys me when phrasebooks and other
language-learning guides use them. There's a couple of books in the
"Teach Yourself" series that are especially bad at this (the Thai one
for instance).

Hopefully with all the IPA pronunciation guides on Wikipedia (e.g. for
names of U.S. states and Canadian provinces), more English-speaking
readers will have had some exposure to phonetic symbols. Since any kind
of English spelling-based pronunciation guide is going to need a key
anyway (IE as in "pie", not "field"), there really shouldn't be that
much of a disadvantage to using actual IPA symbols.