Adventures in Pelsatian Pronunciation

After encountering some creative approaches at pronouncing names from my book, including its very title, it has occurred to me that, spelt in an unmodified Latin alphabet, pronunciations can be extremely vague. What can be done about that? Should every Fantasy work have a pronunciation guide appended to it? If the author values that everything be pronounced the way they intended, possibly. One of my early ideas for Ssalia and the Dragons of Avienot was to do just that — unfortunately, I ended up omitting it from the final book (I would like to pretend I had a good reason to do so, but I believe I simply forgot to write it), which I am starting to regret as I'm a big fan of linguistics and pronouncing things properly. So what's a poor author to do? Create a second edition with notes attached? Possibly, but because I am cheap like that, I'm just going to be using my blog instead. Using IPA approximations, here's how to pronounce some of the more problematic names from the book, for all the poor souls who have ever wondered how on earth to say these out loud:

• Avienot: ˈaː-vje-nɔt
• Kalan: ˈka-laːn
• Khârod: ˈkχaː-ʀɔd
• Ssalia: ˈsal-jaː
• Tia’regon: ˈtja-ʁe-gɔn
• Varog’niev: va-ˈʁɔg-ni-jɛv
• Vellisia: vɛl-ˈliː-zi-jaː
• Viola: ˈvjɔ-la

And now, go and impress your friends by pronouncing fun stuff correctly, like the title of the book. More pronunciations may be covered in a future post if there is need or interest (peradventure even both!).