When you are marking up your scripts or sending me scripts, it helps to have a pronunciation guide for unfamiliar or made-up words. Some people use the International Phonetic Alphabet, but to be honest, most people do not know it (including me) and though very powerful, it is very convoluted.
This system I use is stolen from various sources like dictionary.com and Wikipedia. It is terribly straight forward and intuitive and can be easily read on the fly.
Below are two tables - one for consonants and the other for vowels. They simply give how to respell words so that there is no confusion as to how they are said.
Stresses in words are dealt with using capitals, so a racoon would be ra-KUUN and pronunciation would be prə-NUN-see-AY-shən.
Notice the use of the letter ə, which is often called a schwa. You will see in the vowel section that this is used where the vowel sound is unstressed - so very short!
Consonants | ||
ch | church, child | |
h | hat, have | |
hw | which, why | |
j | judge | |
kh | loch (Scottish), Buch (German) | |
ng | thing, ring | |
sh | ship, dish, ration, ratio | |
th | thin, thigh, beneath | |
dh | this, thy | |
y | yes, yonder | |
zh | vision, pleasure | |
b | boy, cob | |
d | dog, had | |
f | fast, off | |
g | good, dog | |
k | kitchen, cook | |
l | long, ball | |
m | money, ram | |
n | no, ton | |
p | pale, lap | |
r | rat, run, arrange | |
s | sun, pass | |
t | tall, short | |
v | value, rev | |
w | water, walk | |
z | zebra, biz | |
Vowels | ||
a | apathy, pat, lad, ran | |
ay | pay, paid, say, ablation | |
air | care, hair, there, verify | |
ah | father, palm | |
ar | arm, farther | |
e | let, head, fell | |
ee | bee, see, complete | |
i | invalid, pit, city, rabbit, garbage | |
ahy | item, pie, by, my | |
eer | pier, near, here | |
o | pot, not, wasp, hock | |
ohr | north, war, force, wore | |
oh | toe, no | |
aw | caught, paw | |
oi | noise, boy | |
uu | took, put | |
oor | tour, manure | |
oo | boot, soon, through | |
ow | out, now | |
u | cut, run, enough | |
ər | urge, term, firm, word, heard, bird, vernier, butter, winner | |
ə | about, item, gallop, circus, edible, | |
yoo | pupil, | |
oe | feu (French), schön, zwölf (German) | |
ue | tu (French), über (German) | |
o(ng) | bon (French) |