Societas Via Romana - Discussion Archives

Salve,
While searching for Gladiator fighting types to use for a User ID to use with a new e-mail account I did find one to use. But, I was wondering how it would be pronounced. "Dimachaerius" , this type had light armour and used two swords. I'm not really sure I am going to use this but was
curious as how to say it.

Hmm, a pity you can't use phonetic spelling here.

Allright, how to explain this...

This might be a good transcription for anglophones: /dee-ma-chai-rioos/, where the first <a> is a shorter version of the vowel in the word <palm> and the <ch> is a guttural fricative as in the German word <Nacht>. Arabic has this sound to a much stronger extent. Dutch has it too. English used to have it until somewhere down the Middle Ages. If you don't have a clue about German, try to make the sound /k/ into a fricative. That will be approximately right.

Vale!
Draco