pronounce raze strip away the meanings and what you're left with is sounds. in my head the firmness of vowels is reversed. i don't know why. the word "ale", for instance, features a hard a sound, but to my mind it's soft. the word "raw" has a hard a sound, but to me that's hard. it has a harsher, closed-off quality. i think they got it wrong. ay is soft. ah is hard. sarah is both hard and soft, but a lama is hard all the way. 140902 ... epitome of incomprehensibility aver means either to prove or to "pronounce" something true; but how do you say it? a-VURR? a-VAIR? Mirriam-Webster says the former. Some words I've seen, even written, but never pronounced. 140903 ... raze a few words really threw me when i heard them for the first time. as a kid i assumed "segue" was pronounced "SEEG". when i heard someone say "SEG-WEIGH" for the first time, my brain went, "huh? oh. OH!" and then it clicked. 140903 what's it to you? who go blather from