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The word in question is "thraal", a species from the Dr. Who universe (http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Thraal) and coincidentally also a species from the Transformers universe (http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Thraal).

The only similar word I know of is "Baal" and I've heard "bal", "bail" and "bawl" for that as well... so that doesn't help.

Any guidance?

tchrist
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Charles Winters
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    Given that in either case it's an alien word, not English, I suggest that you ask those fan communities how it was pronounced in the original media. – keshlam Jun 08 '14 at 00:07
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    So there's no hard and fast rule for "aa", it always depends on the language of origin? It's definitely not a very common pair. – Charles Winters Jun 08 '14 at 00:16
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    The *only* “hard-and-fast” rule about the pronunciation of some given letter-sequence in English is that there exists *no* “hard-and-fast” rule linking how something is written in English with how it is said. The only real rule is that there are never any real rules. Consider: Aaron, Isaac, Haarlem, Quaalude. – tchrist Jun 08 '14 at 00:38
  • English has no hard and fast pronunciation rules. There are guidelines, but they aren't reliable. (Unlike Spanish, for example, where spelling is always phonetic.) And loanwords from other languages may be pronounced as they were in the other language, or in some fashion that has mutated over the years. But science-fiction terms from alien languages aren't even loanwords... and may not actually be correctly pronounced, or even pronounceable, by humans. (The K in "Klingon", for example, is actually a side-of-the-tongue unvoiced frictive which is not used in any known Human language.) – keshlam Jun 08 '14 at 00:44
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    The rules that English does have are really spelling rules, not pronunciation rules. For the most part spellings have historically been created to represent pronunciations, not the other way around. The spoken language is the main form. – bdsl Jun 14 '15 at 18:04
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    You pronounce "aa" as shown/heard here. – Hot Licks Feb 03 '16 at 20:17
  • Don't forget the word "Bazaar" – tox123 Oct 29 '16 at 18:34

3 Answers3

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While not actually disagreeing with any of the above, I think there are ad-hoc rules for pronouncing 'aa' and 'th' in unfamiliar and fictional names. 'Aa' will generally be assumed to be as in aardvark, and 'th', although it can be a voiced or unvoiced fricative in English generally, will always be assumed to be unvoiced in a new name.

David Garner
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Not only is the aa unclear from the spelling alone, so is the th. It could be /ðreɪəl/, /ðrɑːl/, /ðrɑːˌɑ/, /ðrɑˌɑ/, /θreɪəl/, /θrɑːl/, /θrɑːˌɑl/ or /θrɑˌɑl/ just going by the received pronunciations of the words Baal, Salaam, aa, the and theme. This is not exhaustive.

The association between spelling and pronunciation is a mixture of spellings and pronunciations mutating in semi-separate ways for the last 1000 years, while new borrowings keep being thrown in, with different degrees of Anglicisation, all the while.

Since the only source seems to be a novel, it's in fact quite possible that there isn't a pronunciation at all. They could very well have picked the unusual aa and the ambiguous th precisely because this doesn't give us enough information to make a confident guess as to the pronunciation. Indeed, given that the author has written at least one sci-fi-comedy novel, it's quite possible indeed. You could always email them and ask, but until then a conclusive answer is impossible.

Jon Hanna
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    Here are a few more for him: Aaron, Isaac, Baal, Canaan, Haarlem, Maastricht, Quaalude, Kierkegaard, Kwanzaa, Saalian, Afrikaans, Baathism, Transvaal; bazaar, salaam, van der Waals, baa/baas/baaing/baaed, allo chaat, phaal. I think I count at least [æ, e, eɪ, ʌ, ɐ, ɑ, ɒ, ə] there, although I don’t claim those are all phonemic distinctions for all speakers. Point is that there are a heck of a lot of them, and the rule is there’s no rule. (Ok, I wouldn’t expect aa to ever show up as [ʘyːǂ], but you get what I mean.) – tchrist Jun 08 '14 at 00:55
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    @tchrist, yeah, I just wanted enough to have a mix for both aa and th. As well as the vowel(s), it wouldn't even be unheard of for the th to be /t/ as in Thames or Thailand or even /th/ as in hothouse (okay, that's pretty unlikely without an earlier vowel, but maybe "thraal" originates from a contraction!) – Jon Hanna Jun 08 '14 at 01:00
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Based on transliteration of Indic languages, I would assume /ɑ:/.

ccityplanner12
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