United Nations, New York, USA. The United Nations has scheduled a special session on pronunciation aimed at the ultimate goal of harmonizing the pronunciation of Roman alphabet characters around the world. Sir Angus MacGuiness, MP and Adjunct Undersecretary to Her Majesty’s Standing Council on Inflections and Pronunciation, has requested and required the British Delegation to the UN, via unanimous consent of Parliament, to petition for a special session on the subject of the pronunciation of the Roman alphabet.
Speaking for the office of the Adjunct Undersecretary, assistant Duncan Hiney Peebles disclosed to members of the press that the issue of how to pronounce words written in the Roman alphabet has gotten completely out of hand. “Between Polish, Welsh, and Icelandic, we have no idea even how to sound out these words” Peebles flatly stated. “We believe that the situation has gone completely bonkers and that an international body needs to convene on the matter.”
When pressed on the matter of standarization, Peebles replied “naturally, we believe that British English should be the standard for pronunciation. Minimally,” Peebles said, “words should be phonetically translated when printed in English speaking media.”
Peebles then went on to cite examples of words that should be phonetically translated even though they use Roman characters. “Take the case of the Islandic Volcano ‘Eyjafjallajökull’ ” Peebles pleaded. “For Christ’s sake! It is pronounced eh eeya fyatla yokutla. How is anybody supposed to know to pronounce a double ‘ll’ as a ‘t’ sound? And then there is Polish and Welsh. This is insane and we have stop pretending that it is not a problem, ” Peebles pleaded.
A resolution been proposed and will come before the General Assembly in June of 2012, but is not expected to pass.
Lamentations on Chemistry 
The simple and effective French model is the key to success, in three parts!
1) Half the letters are silent (non-exlcusionary versus (2)).
2) Half the letters carry no meaning (non-exlcusionary versus (1)).
3) A profusion of lofted and suspended squiggles and blurts do something or other.
French is the preferred language of diplomacy. It sounds wonderful. It cannot be resolved into unambiguous meaning. The Paris Peace Accords 1954, 1973, and 1991 demonstrated the diplomatic power of elegant goo and dribble. Croissants anybody? (Pronouced exactly the way it sounds.)
@Uncle Al: Dude, the LAST thing we need is to follow French romanization. They basically wrecked Vietnamese orthography…who would expect “Nguyen” to be pronounced “win”? Besides, as a German postdoc once told me, the French have “sloppy vowels” and “lazy consonants”. Yeah, Polish is a bit vowel-starved, but at least it and the other romanized Slavic languages use diacritics to indicate alternate pronunciations. Anyway, do you pronounce “croissants” as “kroy-sants” or “kwah-sahNt”? “Android” as “an-droyd” or “oN-dwah”? “Hemerrhoid” as “heh-mer-Royd” or “Emm-Rwah”?
What a hoot! I love this exchange.