Word Court

Janet Testerman, of Naples, Fla., writes: “I am teaching a high-school world-history class for the first time this year, and I’m baffled. At the bottom of every page of the 1,000-page textbook, there are pronunciation guides for words on that page. The Sui dynasty is pronounced ‘Sway.’ Ogodei, an important descendent of Genghis Khan, is pronounced ‘Ergoday.’ Why don’t they print translations of foreign words phonetically in the first place?”

I’ve had the same thought. But what is a “foreign” word, and what’s a “phonetic” spelling? How to treat foreign words in general is a big subject, so maybe we should stick to discussing ones like your two examples: proper names. No matter how we define “foreign” names, the category ought to include Sui and Ogodei , which come from languages that don’t even use our ...