What is the deal with the pronouncing guide in the back of the Book of Mormon?
Right in between the last page of Moroni and the first page of the Doctrine and Covenants in my triple combination there are four pages which give guidelines for pronouncing names found in the Book of Mormon. Several questions come to mind.
1. Do languages besides English also have a pronunciation guide? Given that we pronounce even the easiest and most common names differently in different languages, what would be the point of multi-lingual pronouncing guides? In German, z.B., Nephi = NAYfee and Mormon = moreMOAN.
2. How did the pronouncing guide come about? Was it always there? If not, when was it added? Given that none of us has ever heard a single syllable of the language spoken by the Jaredites, what is the basis for our claim to know how they said their names? My best guess is that some ancient language people at BYU took their best guess. If I am mistaken, and Gazelem (pronounced GaZAYlim, not GaZEElim, as I have been saying all these years) looked into his seerstone and discerned the true pronunciation, I want somebody to tell me.
3. I think the guide is probably an attempt to influence people to say the same words in the same way, to reduce confusion. But as I glance over the list of words in the guide, I see some that everybody pronounces incorrectly, which suggests that everybody ignores the guide anyway. For instance, the guide says that we should say PaCUmeni, but I think I have always heard it said as pacuMENi, even by religion teachers at BYU.
The funniest entry is the one for the guy in the book of Ether whose name is Moron. You know how to pronounce that, right?
Wrong. It’s MOREun. You MOREun.