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/oo/ with optional fronting as in 'news' (/nooz/or/nyooz/) |
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The glyph / / is used for the 'schwa' sound of unstressed or occluded vowels. 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/. |
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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. |
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The intent of this scheme is to permit as many readers as possible to map the pronunciations into their local dialect by ignoring some subset of the distinctions we make. Speakers of British RP, for example, can smash terminal /r/ and all unstressed vowels. Speakers of many varieties of southern American will automatically map /o/ to /aw/; and so forth. (Standard American makes a good reference dialect for this purpose because it has crisp consonants and more vowel distinctions than other major dialects, and tends to retain distinctions between unstressed vowels. It also happens to be what your editor speaks.) |
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Entries with a pronunciation of '//' are written-only usages. (No, Unix weenies, this does not mean 'pronounce like previous pronunciation'!) |
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Other Lexicon Conventions |
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Entries are sorted in case-blind ASCII collation order (rather than the letter-by-letter order ignoring interword spacing common in mainstream dictio- |
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