Pronunciation Guide for Death & Magic

I have tried to spell the names as I would if they were English words, but because English spelling is so inconsistent, it wasn't always possible to devise spellings that gave the pronunciation I wanted and were pleasing to the eye. This page gives the pronunciations of the names that occur most often in Death & Magic, using both familiar English words and the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). (See here for a guide to what the IPA symbols mean.)

General Rules

You can usually get something close to my intended pronunciation by observing the following:

There are no silent letters. The stress almost always falls on the first syllable of a word. Consonants and combinations of consonants generally have their English values. G is always as in give, never as in gin. S never sounds like Z. DH represents the TH of these. TH is always the TH of thin. KH represents the sound of CH in Scottish loch. A is usually the sound in cat and lad. AR is more like car. E is usually as in bet and bed. I is as in pin. O is usually as in got. OR is as in ore. A notable exception is Zorian, where the O is short, making it rhyme with sorry Anne, not sore Ian. U is pronounced oo, never you. Y is a consonant at the start of a word, and a vowel (as in why) elsewhere.

The Names

Back to index of bonus material

Last update: 25/7/2020 17:09