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Some examples: "never" might be written as "neva"

"I don't know" is sometimes written as "iono" or "I dunno" on various internet media.

My question is: is there a word for this particular technique of spelling a term in the way it is (sometimes) pronounced?

Laurel
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tsujin
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1 Answers1

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Yes. It's called eye dialect:

Eye dialect is the use of deliberately nonstandard spelling to emphasize how a word is being pronounced. The term was coined by George Philip Krapp to refer a literary technique that implies the standard pronunciation of a given word that is not well-reflected by its standard spelling, such as wimmin to more accurately represent the typical English pronunciation of women. However, eye dialect is also commonly used to indicate that a character's speech is vernacular (nonstandard), foreign, or uneducated. This form of nonstandard spelling differs from others in that a difference in spelling does not indicate a difference in pronunciation of a word. That is, it is dialect to the eye rather than to the ear.

Wikipedia

(The opposite, pronouncing a word as it is spelled, is called spelling pronunciation)

Andrew Leach
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    And if you are trying to indicate a nonstandard pronunciation, you can call it pronunciation spelling. Yes, it's used both ways around to mean two different things. From DARE: "Pronunciation-spellings are those in which a writer tries to represent the nonstandard pronunciation of a speaker." – Phil Sweet May 07 '21 at 09:21