Apronunciation respelling is a regular phonetic respelling of a word that has a standard spelling but whose pronunciation according to that spelling may be ambiguous, which is used to indicate the pronunciation of that word. Pronunciation respellings are sometimesseen in word dictionaries.
The term should not be confused withpronunciation spelling which is anad hoc spelling of a word that has no standard spelling. Most of these arenonce words though some have achieved a certain amount of standardization, e.g., the informal use of the wordgonna to represent an informal pronunciation ofgoing to.
Pronunciation spellings may be used informally to indicate the pronunciation of foreign words or those whose spelling is irregular or insufficient for the reader to deduce the pronunciation. In such cases,typeface,punctuation orletter case may also be used, e.g., to indicatestress orsyllabication of the word. For example:
This offers a sometimes intuitive alternative to systems like theInternational Phonetic Alphabet, which offers precise descriptions but must be learned. For example:
However, respelling relies on the writer's encoded mapping to the samephonemes as the reader's; e.g.
might be adequate for certainnon-rhotic readers but not rhotic ones.
Unlike the IPA, respelling systems are often specific to the works in which they appear. The English-language Wikipedia, for example, has its own respelling system (available atHelp:Pronunciation respelling key) which may or may not match that used on other Wikipedias or in other contexts.
Pronunciation spellings are sometimes used in narratives to representnonstandard dialects oridiolects to create an impression of backwardness orilliteracy in the speaker. This is calledliterary dialect, often calledeye dialect, though the latter term used to be applied only if the resulting pronunciation is the same as the standard one. For example:
Pronunciation spellings as deliberate misspellings may be used for humorous effect. The origin of the wordokay is disputed, but the most common view is that it derives from "Oll Korrect", an 1830s comical spelling of "All Correct".
Such spellings may also be used forbranding, e.g., "Lite" foods,Froot Loops. See alsosensational spelling.