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I'm trying to figure out how to make the word Faro sound like Pharaoh as in the Egyptian Pharaoh instead of Far-Oh.

I'm looking into diacritics right now but they are confusing what I'm understanding so far I think is I would use a circumflex to change the A in Faro so it would look like this, Fâro. Am I correct if not can someone help me out?

Thank you in advance.

Joshua
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    This is unfortunately impossible; you have to use a separate guide to the pronunciation the way you do in this post ("as in the Egyptian Pharaoh"). "Fâro" has as wide a range of possible pronunciations as "Faro". See the similar question English regarding the letter i being pronounced as ee – herisson Jun 24 '17 at 01:57
  • In some systems for Pronunciation respelling for English including American Heritage Dictionary notation, ă represents the so-called "short A" sound, /æ/. – Jim Jun 24 '17 at 02:54
  • @Jim: Hmm, but "Pharaoh" is generally pronounced with the "long a" sound, for people who distinguish these sounds in this position. – herisson Jun 24 '17 at 03:18
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    @sumelic - I pronounce it fair-oh not fay-row – Jim Jun 24 '17 at 03:20
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    @Jim: That's about syllabification or "juncture", though, not vowel length per se. I don't pronounce "goalie" the same as "slowly" but both have a "long o" vowel. For some people, the vowel in words like "fair" and "fairy" is distinct from the vowel in words like "carry" and "marry". https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/88115/how-are-marry-merry-and-mary-pronounced-differently – herisson Jun 24 '17 at 03:22
  • @sumelic- I convinced myself that it was approximately correct by starting to say the word fat which has the short ’a’ sound and before uttering the final ’t’ changing to say the ’r’ followed by ’oh’. WhIch I thought was much closer to OP’s desired pronunciation. – Jim Jun 24 '17 at 03:26
  • I don't think English has any diacritical marks natively. – Lawrence Jun 24 '17 at 04:15
  • @Lawrence - http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-curse-of-the-diaeresis – Jim Jun 24 '17 at 04:22
  • The marks exist, but I suspect they came with specific loan words - I don't think they're native to the English language. Even cooperate, mentioned in the article you linked to, is unadorned in standard English. – Lawrence Jun 24 '17 at 04:34
  • @sumelic It's not just about syllabification, but also simply vowel quality. Fair(y) has /eə/ (syllabified after the consonant), carry/marry has /a/ (also syllabified after the consonant), and mayory has /eɪ/ (syllabified before the consonant). To me at least, only the third has the ‘long a’ sound; pharaoh varies between the two first, never the third. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jun 24 '17 at 07:50
  • @JanusBahsJacquet: I would say the vowel quality is the phonetic realization of the phonological distinction based on syllabification/junction. I'm not familar with any phonemic analysis of North American English that postulates /eə/ as a distinct phoneme. – herisson Jun 24 '17 at 07:59
  • @sumelic So which phoneme would you say it is, then? /eɪ/ with syllabification after a following /r/? I suppose that would work… Even so, pharaoh is quite commonly pronounced with a short /a/ as well, which basically just makes it unclear what exactly the asker is looking for. (I'm also curious as to how goalie and slowly differ phonetically for you—they're the same for me, apart from the initial consonant of course, and I don't recall ever registering a distinction in others either.) – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jun 24 '17 at 08:07
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    @JanusBahsJacquet: Well, I'm Mary/merry/marry merged, so my intuition doesn't necessarily apply for non-merged speakers, but I would say it is /eɪ/. I just realized the last sentence of my last comment is wrong--phonemic /eə/ seems to be necessary in accents that have ash-tensing with lexical exceptions to the rules. For me, "goalie" has a smoothed/velarized "o" (something like /oə̯/ or /o̞ə̯/, more or less the same vowel as I use in "gory") while "slowly" has a rising diphthong /oʊ/. – herisson Jun 24 '17 at 08:16

1 Answers1

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English doesn't much use diacritics, but many folks do learn as schoolchildren (at least in the US) that a breve ˘ over a vowel means a "short" vowel, and a macron ¯ means a long vowel1. Pharaoh is pronounced with a long-a in the first syllable2, so you would want a macron over the a in Faro:

Fāro

This is a solution that I've seen used by some brand names; one example is Drāno, which is pronounced like drain-oh:

Close-up image of Drāno Max Gel, showing macron over the small letter a in the word Drano. (Photo by Mike Mozart)

1 For example, in this phonics lesson.
2 You can listen to examples at Forvo.com, as well as looking at pronunciation guides in dictionaries; some, like Cambridge Dictionaries, also include recordings)

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