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

fata morgana

UK /ˌfɑːtə mɔːˈɡɑːnə/ · US /ˌfɑtə mɔɹˈɡɑnə/ noun

Forms fata morganas

  1. noun A form of mirage seen just above the horizon, caused by a temperature inversion in the atmosphere, in which multiple upright and inverted images of a distant object appear to be stacked on top of each other in a highly distorted fashion; especially one seen at sea, and particularly in the Strait of Messina.

Etymology

Borrowed from Italian fata Morgana (“Morgan le Fay”), from fata (“fairy”) + Morgana (“Morgan”).

Webster’s 1913

  1. A kind of mirage by which distant objects appear inverted, distorted, displaced, or multiplied. It is noticed particularly at the Straits of Messina, between Calabria and Sicily.

Etymology [It.; -- so called because this phenomenon was looked upon as the work of a fairy (It. fata) of the name of Morgána. See Fairy.]

Sources: Wiktionary · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “fata morgana”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details