tarquin wrote:
I can't determine accurately how to say "CHOP-ek.". Did the writer mean "CHOP" like the word "chop"?
Probably. That's certainly my interpretation.
Or does it rhyme with "SHOW"?
That would be CHO-pek or perhaps CHOPE-ek.
Or did they in fact *mean* "SHOW", since "CH" is soft in many languages?
But not in English.
And for that matter, how does the writer pronounce the word "chop"? AmEng and BrEng have different vowels for that word.
I would expect that same difference to be reflected in their *anglicized* pronunciation of "Čapek". Am I wrong?
"Hand-made" pronunciation guides are:
- individual & idiosyncratic. Two people with the same accent may write
different things, and may read them differently
- non-portable: people speakling different accents will interpret them
differently
Both true. The same is true of the pronunciations! IPA/SAMPA is even more closely tied to the accent of the transcriber; it is thus useful for describing the pronunciation of foreign words in the official or prestige dialect, or specific dialectical variation, but a lot less useful for describing English words and common anglicized pronunciations of foreign names.
Jaap van Ganswijk wrote:
Unlike what is possible in a paper encyclopedium, why not add a small wav file of someone pronouncing the word correctly?
See [[Clitoris]] for an example: it has a link to [[SAMPA|pronounced]], a SAMPA representation (correctly in [phonetic transcription brackets]), an approximation in English orthography, and a wav file (should it be an ogg?).
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)