Gregg Shorthand: Tomayto/tomahto

Reconciling different accents to a phonetic system.

quick – without looking at your dictionaries, how do you pronounce these words, and how wold you write them in Gregg?

and the word that caught me while studding the other night: Garage?

It took me a while to figure it out when reading, and I had to check my key, and then the dictionary, but the spelling made no sense to me, you see, I live in the US, New York state to be more exact, and I would write "garage" g-a-r-a-j, but the Anniversary texts/dictionary ends it with a "sh"/"zh" my husband, who is interested in phonetics and accents, says that's how it is pronounced in RP (Received Pronunciation, aka British English) But I don't live in England, and I don't speak with an English accents. And most people I encounter don't either. Those words above are pronounced differently depending on where you live, even in the US. According to the Gregg dictionary Mary and marry are m-a-r-e while merry is m-e-r-e. But when spoken by those around me they all sound the same.

What do we do about this when writing something 'in the wild'? Should we write them as we learn them, even if they don't fit? What about words that aren't in the dictionary but are pronounced differently in different places? Should we write words in the spoken accent, or in our own? Will changing a spelling to fit an accent make it difficult for our decedents to read our notes? Does it matter?

I just started Unit 6 of the Anniversary Manual, so if any of these things are explained later, just break it to me gently.