Update: 2004-03-28 03:57 PM -0500

TIL

Pronouncing the letters

ENGLISH PRONOUNCING DICTIONARY

Daniel Jones. Edited by Peter Roach, James Hartman and Jane Setter. Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Scanned by Maung Kan Tun and edited by U Kyaw Tun, M.S. (I.P.S.T., U.S.A.). Not for sale. Prepared for students of TIL Computing and Language Center, Yangon, MYANMAR .
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pronounce_j-k
J | K

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letter J

UKT: The pronunciation of English [ j ] ought to be simple, yet, it has become one of the most confusing for Myanmars, because of:
• The name of English consonant [ j ] in IPA representation is /ʤeɪ/, in American linguistic /ǰeɪ/, and in Myanmar .
• The name of English consonant [ g ] in IPA representation is /ʤiː/, in American linguistic /ǰiː/, and in Myanmar
• The name of English consonant [ y ] in IPA representation is /waɪ/, and in Myanmar it is close to .
• The English word <Jesus> is represented in IPA as /ˈʤiː.zəs/. In Bama it is close to , yet the transliteration in Myanmar coined by the Western missionaries is  with a clear English [ y ] sound. This is because the early Western missionaries to Myanmar were non-English and in their languages the letter of Roman alphabet [ j ] had the sound [ya] or .

p291. In general, the English consonant letter [ j ] is pronounced /ʤ/ (or represented by IPA as /ʤ/ and  by some American linguists as / ǰ /), e.g.:

    <jam> /ʤæm/   - sound    
    <raj> /rɑːʤ/   - sound    

(The latter can also be pronounced /rɑːʒ/ in British English.)

In some exceptional cases [ j ] is pronounced / j /, e.g.

    <hallelujah> /ˌhæl.ɪˈluː.jə/   - sound    

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letter K

p297. In general, the consonant letter [k] is pronounced /k/, e.g.:

    <Kate> /keɪt/        

This is also the case in the digraph [kh], e.g.:

    <khaki> /ˈkɑː.ki/ us /ˈkæk.i/    

In words beginning with [kn], [k] is usually silent, e.g.:

    <knack> /næk/        

However, where the [k] appears before an [n] at a morpheme boundary, it is pronounced, e.g.:

    <sickness> /ˈsɪk.nəs/        

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UKT notes

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