Have you wondered how to pronounce certain words? Do you go "old school" to the good ol' Webster's or Oxford English paper dictionary and review the linguistic information to decipher the pronunciation? If you don't find those useful, do you just ask the Google machine?
If you have been listening on Monday mornings, you will know that I love words. I love to talk about them, write them, and study them. For this reason, I am always looking for new ways to experience words.
Today, I found a YouTube account/page/channel called "Emma Saying." The channel began as a way to verbally pronounce every word in the dictionary so people have an audio pronunciation resource. They began in 2012 and completed their goal with 160,000 entries by 2015. They continue to add content such as person names, place names, product names, food names, and many other topics.
The items are grouped in Playlist categories. There is even a "Top 5 Difficult Words of the Month" category. (Looks like it only has 5 words from 2012, so this one is not regularly updated.)
What prompted me to do this search today? Well, T.O.M (The Old Man) says "Gaya" and I say "Guya" for Gaea of the Gaea Connection Podcast. I have heard this word pronounced in different ways through the years, and I decided to investigate. Turns out BOTH pronunciations are correct. So, if you are in The Old Man's camp, or if you are in my camp, keep keepin' on.
To throw a bigger wrench into the conveyor belt cog, Gaea has TWO spellings as well. BOTH are correct. Gaea or Gaia, so you can also keep on in whichever camp you fall on the spelling.
If you don't know Gaea, or Gaia as a concept, here is the basic information:
https://www.youtube.com/c/EmmaSaying
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHxTwHYg1WE
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/gaea
https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkLnBvZGJlYW4uY29tL3RoZWdhZWFjb25uZWN0aW9uL2ZlZWQueG1s?ep=14
