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howjsay.com, Tim Bowyer's Easy-To-Use English Pronunciation Guide, Part of fonetiks.org


DonRocks

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I have found, regularly use, and want to recommend a wonderfully simple English pronunciation website: howjsay.com.

Pick a tough word, Andromeda, for example, go to howjsay.com, type it in, and push Enter. In about two or three seconds total, you have your pronunciation. Try it!

I wrote Tim Boyer, complimenting him on this tool which I now use several times a week (hey, I'm reading Shakespeare!), he wrote me back as follows:

Quote
...Thanks Don - yes, your website also has a very clean, user-friendly look!  Howjsay.com (Hj) uses a server-side application of Flash to allow language learners to hear pronunciations merely by mousing over the written word.  But as more and more laptop users migrate to tablets and smartphones, this software may soon become obsolete, requiring a complete re-engineering of the site, probably using html5 to replace Flash.  This is a big job so I'm postponing it for the time being, in case somebody comes up in the meantime with a version of Flash that works with tablets and smartphones...
 
Anyway, glad to hear you like the site - welcome praise from a distinguished gourmet!  Hj currently gets over 300,000 pronunciation requests per day.
 
Kind regards,
 
Tim Bowyer

The Fonetiks family of websites

So, while the website - probably the entire family of Fonetiks websites - is wonderful and successful, don't assume it will always be there. He could have one heck of a job facing him one day, so bookmark it, and enjoy it while you can.

Highly recommended for writers, orators, and people who just want to educate themselves, even about a single word.

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Help.

I went to howjsay.com to check the pronunciation of "bonafides," and got this:

You might have to click this twice. I've heard it pronounced similar to this before, and was wondering if it was British.

Then I checked the adjective, "bonafide," and got this:

Bo-nah-fee-day. Really, is this how it's pronounced? Even in America? I know it's a latin (Italian) word, but do people really say this?

So if you say to someone, "Hey, uh, buddy, lemme check your bonafides," you have to sound like some effete grammarian?

If everyone pronounces them like this, then that's fine, but I don't want to be the only one. This website *is* British, but it compensates for American-used words pretty well in general.

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I always thought it was pronounced like "bonafide credentials" (three syllables, accent on first syllable, rhymes with "Donna hides." (*)). Maybe I've just never heard it spoken? Then I heard someone on Night Gallery say Bahn-uh-fye-deez, and I was like, WTF? (Not that "Night Gallery" is the definitive reference on pronouncing "bonafides" or anything. <_< <--- That's the "Get a life, Don" emoticon.)

Click the speaker icon on the French translation for a possible variant - how does Alton Brown pronounce "anise?"

(*) Donna has a sister named Fermalda.

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On 12/28/2014 at 0:45 PM, DonRocks said:

Click the speaker icon on the French translation for a possible variant - how does Alton Brown pronounce "anise?"

an-EESE.  Rhymes with Denise.  The annoying man who worked at the Rockville Penzey's when it first opened did that, too, a fact that I wouldn't remember except that he was "correcting" my pronunciation, which is really rude.

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On 12/28/2014 at 8:36 AM, porcupine said:

If you go up two on the list and click on "bona fides" you hear several pronunciations, including (I would guess) the one you're expecting.

ps if anyone reading this knows Alton Brown please send him the link so he knows how to pronounce "anise".  thx

I seem to recall it is normally written as two words, and the two word version you refer to is the one that has three pronunciations.  This is fine by me, since I always used the fides not the feedaze myself, and had only recently come to believe I had been pronouncing it wrong.  So apparently fides is OK after all.  Now I can move on to something else to worry about.

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