A recent conversation with @khoi_ndh and @schrift_sprache regarding these 19th-c. Vietnamese transcriptions of Japanese vocabulary items got me thinking again about a peculiar kind of conventionalized phonetic notation used in the United States. /1
@khoi_ndh @schrift_sprache As far as I know it has no name but we might call it American English Transcriptional Notation. It is familiar to all literate Americans as a way of indicating pronunciations of unfamiliar names or of foreign words. /2
@khoi_ndh @schrift_sprache Here is an example from a 1994 New York Times article: "Tom Baccei (pronounced buh-SHAY) ...". Here the notation indicates a pronunciation [bə ˈʃej]. /3 
@khoi_ndh @schrift_sprache The notation is not intended to accurately render the sounds of foreign languages, but to precisely indicate a series of phonemes in the English rendering of foreign words or names. /4
@khoi_ndh @schrift_sprache Thus for example one finds in newspaper discussions of the country name Qatar, the question framed as a choice between "kuh-TAR" or "KUH-tar". /5
@khoi_ndh @schrift_sprache I have always wondered if there are any standard guidelines for this notation (or example in the guidelines of newspaper or magazines), of if writers select there own notations. I have never seen any scholarly discussion of this system. /6
@khoi_ndh @schrift_sprache It is not formally taught; English readers just pick it up. The system is based on using English orthographic conventions to unambiguously indicate English phonemes, and the use of capitalization to indicate stressed syllables. /7
@khoi_ndh @schrift_sprache Each syllable is rendered in a way that is intended to make its pronunciation in educated American English koine clear to any literate English speaker. For example, the vowel phoneme [ʌ] is rendered "uh", and the syllable [aj] is rendered "eye". /8
@khoi_ndh @schrift_sprache This system would not be useful for foreign language teaching, but as a way of indicating the closest possible English approximations of the pronunciations of foreign words, it is quite precise, in that it leaves readers in no doubt about which phoneme sequences are intended. /9
@khoi_ndh @schrift_sprache So when I look at the Vietnamese transcriptions of Japanese that started this thread, I wonder ... /10
@khoi_ndh @schrift_sprache Is there enough conventional understanding of how to pronounce the characters (whether in SV or Nôm readings) that the transcriber and the readers would all fully agree on the intended Vietnamese-phonology pronunciations of the Japanese words? /fin
