International Phonetic Alphabet

I am in Chicago at the Architecture and Design World, and today I went to a session on API design. The talk was given by Elliotte Rusty Harold, who wrote more books than I would ever guess (see his home page). The talk covered the most important do’s and don’ts of API design and was very well-delivered.

At the end of the talk Elliotte recommended some API design related books, including the FDG book. He said something like: A great book written by Brad Abrams and somebody whose name I cannot pronounce. J

… which made me think that Elliotte might not be the only person who wonders whether it’s even possible to pronounce a name with 3+ times as many consonants as vowels. J

So, here you go. This is my name (slightly Americanized) written in the International Phonetic Alphabet:

krYstof swalina

The closest English spelling would probably be something like “kristof swahleenah.”

BTW, I wish there was a web page where I could type in a word written in the International Phonetic Alphabet and have it converted to a sound file and played. Anybody knows anything like that?