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I'm trying to figure out how to make the word Faro sound like Pharaoh as in the Egyptian Pharaoh instead of Far-Oh.

I'm looking into diacritics right now but they are confusing what I'm understanding so far I think is I would use a circumflex to change the A in Faro so it would look like this, Fâro. Am I correct if not can someone help me out?

Thank you in advance.

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    This is unfortunately impossible; you have to use a separate guide to the pronunciation the way you do in this post ("as in the Egyptian Pharaoh"). "Fâro" has as wide a range of possible pronunciations as "Faro". See the similar question English regarding the letter i being pronounced as ee
    – herisson
    Jun 24, 2017 at 1:57
  • In some systems for Pronunciation respelling for English including American Heritage Dictionary notation, ă represents the so-called "short A" sound, /æ/.
    – Jim
    Jun 24, 2017 at 2:54
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    @sumelic - I pronounce it fair-oh not fay-row
    – Jim
    Jun 24, 2017 at 3:20
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    @Jim: That's about syllabification or "juncture", though, not vowel length per se. I don't pronounce "goalie" the same as "slowly" but both have a "long o" vowel. For some people, the vowel in words like "fair" and "fairy" is distinct from the vowel in words like "carry" and "marry". english.stackexchange.com/questions/88115/…
    – herisson
    Jun 24, 2017 at 3:22
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    @JanusBahsJacquet: Well, I'm Mary/merry/marry merged, so my intuition doesn't necessarily apply for non-merged speakers, but I would say it is /eɪ/. I just realized the last sentence of my last comment is wrong--phonemic /eə/ seems to be necessary in accents that have ash-tensing with lexical exceptions to the rules. For me, "goalie" has a smoothed/velarized "o" (something like /oə̯/ or /o̞ə̯/, more or less the same vowel as I use in "gory") while "slowly" has a rising diphthong /oʊ/.
    – herisson
    Jun 24, 2017 at 8:16

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English doesn't much use diacritics, but many folks do learn as schoolchildren (at least in the US) that a breve ˘ over a vowel means a "short" vowel, and a macron ¯ means a long vowel1. Pharaoh is pronounced with a long-a in the first syllable2, so you would want a macron over the a in Faro:

Fāro

This is a solution that I've seen used by some brand names; one example is Drāno, which is pronounced like drain-oh:

Close-up image of Drāno Max Gel, showing macron over the small letter a in the word Drano. (Photo by Mike Mozart)

1 For example, in this phonics lesson.
2 You can listen to examples at Forvo.com, as well as looking at pronunciation guides in dictionaries; some, like Cambridge Dictionaries, also include recordings)

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