John Cowan wrote:
>
> What are the accepted pronunciations of "abjad" and "abugida"?
>
> Personally I say ['abdZad] and [abu'gida], where [a] may be realized as
> [A], as I don't have [a] in my dialect of English.
Being a good New Yorker, I say /'&bjehd/ (Smith-Trager, where <&> is
[æ], the "ash" digraph, low front), certainly not [a] or [A]. /'&abj&d/
is appropriate for those who don't distinguish marry and Mary. In the
Arabic from which it's borrowed, it's more like "ubjud" (with stressed
shwas, cf. Punjab).
The other one is straightforward, /,abuw'giyd@/, pretty much the same as
in the Amharic original.
--
Peter T. Daniels
grammatim@...