On Wed, 14 Aug 2002, Mark Tiller wrote: #I'm sure that someone may have already asked this, but exactly how are #you supposed to pronounce Dzur? I pronounce it dz as in oDDS ur as in bURn Words in English don't begin with "dz" or the similar "ts", so this is troublesome for many. In _Jhereg_ SKZB issued a pronunciation guide which says "tser". But I regret to say that I have considerable trouble with that guide; not that I consider its source unreliable!, but that inventing pronunciation guides is a lot more complicated and difficult than it seems. I'm speaking professionally here; I'm not a lexicographer, but I am a linguist (language scientist), and some of my work at Dragon Systems for 12 years was closely allied to this. In defense of the general statement in my second sentence, I'll just point to the line Jhereg jhuh-REG 1. There's no indication of what "jh" means. Unlike "j" and "zh", it has no conventional meaning either in English spelling or in customary transliteration of foreign languages. 2. The stress (accent) is contrary to what otherwise seems to be the most straightforward reading of the Cycle poem: Jhereg feeds on others' kills JHEreg FEEDS on OTHers' KILLS That, of course, doesn't prove that SKZB slipped up. -- Dr. Whom, Consulting Linguist, Grammarian, Orthoepist, and Philological Busybody a.k.a. Mark A. Mandel http://world.std.com/~mam/Cracks-and-Shards/ a Steven Brust Dragaera fan website