Klryz
Pronunciation guide: IPA symbols, stress and word endings

Vowels

iːseeɪsite / ɛbedæcat
ɑːfatherɒhot (UK)ɔːlawʊput
uːtooʌcupɜːbirdəabout
eɪdayaɪmyɔɪboyaʊnow
əʊ / oʊgo (UK / US)ɪəneareəhairʊətour

Consonants that look unusual

θthinðthisʃsheʒmeasure
tʃchurchdʒjudgeŋsingjyes

p b t d k g f v s z h m n l r w sound as in ordinary English spelling.

Marks

  • ˈ main stress, before the stressed syllable: /ˈwɔːtə/ water · ˌ lighter (secondary) stress: /ˌʌndəˈstænd/ understand
  • ː a long vowel · (r) an r said only in accents that pronounce it (most American, Scottish, Irish)

Common word endings

  • -s / -es (plurals; he/she form of verbs): /s/ after voiceless sounds (cats), /z/ after voiced (dogs), /ɪz/ after s, z, sh, ch, j sounds (buses, watches). Spelling: -es after s, x, z, ch, sh; consonant + y → -ies (city → cities).
  • -ed (past): /t/ after voiceless sounds (walked), /d/ after voiced (played), /ɪd/ after t or d (wanted). Spelling: love → loved, stop → stopped, carry → carried.
  • -ing: make → making, run → running, see → seeing.
  • Irregular: go, went, gone · be, was, been · see, saw, seen · man → men · child → children · mouse → mice.
  • Older (King James) forms: -eth = -s (he loveth = he loves) · -est with “thou” (thou lovest) · spake = spoke.

English Dictionary · 107,383 entries · Sources & licences

Madagascar

UK /mædəˈɡæskə/ · US /mædəˈɡæskɑɹ/ proper noun, noun

Forms Madagascars

  1. proper noun An island and country off the east coast of Africa. Official name: Republic of Madagascar. Capital: Antananarivo.
  2. noun (rare, obsolete) A resident of Madagascar.

Synonyms

Madagascan Madagascarian Malagasy Republic of Madagascar Malagasy Republic

Etymology

Borrowed from Middle French Madagascar, from Madageiscar, popularly reputed as a corrupted transliteration of Mogadishu by Marco Polo's misreading of Arabic. The maps of particular interest are that of al-Idrisi in the 12th century, who produced the Tabula Rogeriana, the most advanced world map at the time.
The actual misconstrued term was Arabic جَزِيرَة المَالَائِيّ (jazīrat al-mālāʔiyy, “The Island of Mālāī”) listed alongside Arabic جَزِيرَة القَمَر (jazīrat al-qamar, “The Island of the Moon”) which lent its name to Comoros; Madagascar however likely being the original based on its dimensions.
The map in question warps the direction of Africa's east coast to be parallel to the coast of southeast Asia, prompting a conflation of the regions furthest east and furthest south, in the reaches of Arab exploration. This perhaps makes the Island of Mālāī both representing Madagascar and an island in Indonesia, likely Sumatra, in close proximity to Malaysia. To conflate matters further, the populations of both regions are of Austronesian background, a fact pointed out by Arab explorers who identified Madagascar as colony of the former region. A second wave of Austronesians, including Malays, did indeed migrate to the island after the first group had originally left from what was likely Southern Borneo from linguistic and genetic analysis.
"Mālāī-Gezīra" also holds connection to the term for the people and languages of the island, Malagasy, which had earlier forms Malegass and Madegass, because of dialect division.

Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 — from the Wiktionary entry “Madagascar”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details