Lands and Sounds of the Vaporous Realms
Geography and pronunciation
The Vaporous Realms Geography 101
Here is the current, official map of the Vaporous Realms. Each graphic highlights a different region where a different story-cycle takes place, more or less.
How to Say Those Weird Names
Though the diverse folk of the Vaporous Realms speak different languages and dialects, we thought it would be a kindness to y’all to follow consistent, phonetic rules for spelling. This means that the names sound more or less the way they're spelled, with American English as the default point of reference. A particular letter or letter combination represents the same specific phoneme (sound) in most instances. Here is a handy reference guide!
A as in car
AA as in German Zähne (similar to AE below, but more fully blended into a single sound)
AE as in lay or lair
AI as in fight
Æ as in smash
B as in bear
C or K as in cat
C’H or K’H as in German ich.
CW or KW as in quick
D as in door
DD as in Betty, latter, or ladder.
DR as in drive
E as in bet
-EW as in brew
II as in beet
F as in fox
G as in game
GH as a breathy (aspirated) G
H as in hat, except where it follows a vowel to indicate a drawled sound.
I as in pick
-H added to a vowel sound indicates a drawled form, except at the end of a word or name, where it's aesthetic only.
J as in jump
L as in lake
M as in mouse
N as in net
NG as in sing
NN as an N with the preceding vowel nasalized
O as in pot
OA as in oar
OO as in German böse (like oe pronounced as one sound)
P as in pan
R as in rot
RH as a breathy (aspirated) R
RR as a rolled R
S as in snake
SH as in shirt
T as in tower
TH as in think
TSH as in chair
TTH or D (letter eth) as in these
U as in but
-UI- as in fruit
UU as in German für (like ue pronounced as one sound
V as in vast
W as in water
Y as in yak
Z as in zebra
ZSH as in French Jacques
A few examples
“How do I say…?’
Well, we can’t stop you (or ourselves) from saying the names in the stories any which way. But here are the intended pronunciations:
Len = [LEHN]
Egwae = [EGG-way]
Kaelii = [KAY-lee]
Kræwk = [KR(OW)K]
Zshurii = [ZSH(UH)-ree]
Rhecah = [HRHEH-cah]
Delfii = [DELL-fee]
Cranc = [KRAHNK]
A Holiday Note from the Author
Christmas is on the overmorrow and the days are inching longer again, Wright be praised. Here’s a Substack essay by Michael John Petty I keep rereading to remind myself to appreciate the season and all the gifts I’ve been given. Without intentional remembrance of the blessings, the things we lack in this vaporous realm of ours have a way of demanding we fixate on them instead.
Otherwise, I won’t claim to have read much this past week. But I did make two remarkable discoveries: (1) There is an entire subgenre of middling-budget feel-good movies devoted to Christmas in Louisiana, more than one of which feature, curiously, Virginia-born New Yorker Hilarie Burton. (2) Even better, there exist hours upon hours of YouTube videos in which the creator strolls around various German and German-adjacent Christmas markets. The food, the snow, the shops, the lights and greenery, the cathedrals—best background content ever for working in December.
In the original posting, and alas in the 2023 minibooks (The Vaporous Realms: A Brief Introduction and Into the Vaporous Realms), I incorrectly had 'this' as a sample for pronouncing TH. But 'this' is the letter eth, essentially the same as in 'these.' Oops.