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Language Log notes that Apple's Dictionary program (v. 1.02 running in Tiger) gave an interesting pronunciation for "Myanmar:" It's pronounced "Burma."

(Credit: Language Log)

I would tend to think this is an accident, but it's an interesting one. I've edited articles that required the country to be called Burma for political reasons and others that follow the international convention of calling it Myanmar. Either way, if I were manufacturing this sort of thing I might flag all the controversial geographical terms for careful review.

Another reason it is probably an accident (and not someone's intentional statement) is that it only appears this way in one phonetic system. According to TidBits, a Mac blog that apparently first reported this, "Dictionary has three different options for displaying the pronunciation key, which you can select in the Preferences window: U.S. English (Diacritical), U.S. English (IPA), and British English (IPA). It turns out that only the two IPA (international phonetic alphabet) choices show the pronunciation of "Burma"; the U.S. English (Diacritical) pronunciation is correct."

Now, sitting as I am just a couple of kilometers from North Korea in Dandong, Liaoning Province, China, the question arises: Is it North Korea or the Democratic People's Republic of Korea? China or the People's Republic of China? Am I American, U.S. American, "from the United States," or just a foreigner? Apple's dictionary has no help for me there.

Ask.com, the fourth-ranked search engine, plans to increase its heft through an agreement to acquire Lexico Publishing Group, which operates the Dictionary.com, Thesaurus.com, and Reference.com Web sites.

Ask.com didn't release terms of the acquisition, but Lexico is "highly profitable, with high double-digit growth for a couple years," said Jim Safka, chief executive of the IAC-owned search site. And by using Ask.com's advertising relationship with Google on the Lexico sites, the company should be able to increase the ad revenue.

Adding Lexico's Web visitor count will increase Ask.com's monthly visitors to 145 million, according to ComScore statistics, Safka said. "Overnight, our unique users will increase by 11 percent, which is outstanding," he said.

Ask far trails its biggest rival, Google, but some other competitors are within striking distance. According to search market share statistics from HitWise released Wednesday, Google had 67.25 percent share of U.S. searches in April to Yahoo's 20.28 percent, Microsoft's 6.26 percent, and Ask.com's 4.17 percent.

Microsoft's attempt to acquire Yahoo saga raised the prospect of consolidation of two of Safka's competitors.

But Safka thinks the months-long back-and-forth distracted the companies, and the news that activist shareholder Carl Icahn might take on Yahoo's board left him gleeful.

"I love it," Safka said. "Just when you thought Microsoft and Yahoo were going to get on with their lives, it's going to paralyze them once again."

The inventor of the increasingly ubiquitous Pleco Chinese-English dictionary software for Palm and Windows Mobile devices said the company is "very seriously considering developing" an iPhone version.

In an interview in April's China International Business (not yet online), Michael Love tells of developing the 6-year-old product and how it's getting popular enough that many foreigners in China are buying PDAs or PDA phones just to use Pleco.

I, for one, would not have bought my Windows Mobile-running HTC Touch if not for this program, and untold dozens of my Beijing friends and acquaintances are carrying around Treos for the same reason. (Love said he switches between a Treo 680 and an HTC Touch, himself.)

Here's what Love had to say about the iPhone prospects:

We're not thrilled about Apple locking down distribution and charging developers a 30 percent commission to sell iPhone software, but we really like the platform and think it has enough potential to be worth the hefty fees.

The iPod Touch is actually more exciting to us, in some respects, than the iPhone, since it doesn't force you to change your cell phone carrier and can be found almost anywhere.

It's next to impossible to buy a cell phone-less Palm or Windows Mobile handheld in many parts of the world nowadays, but the iPod Touch is all over the place, so for those people who are willing to buy a handheld just to run Pleco, it would be a better option than they've had in quite a while.

Answers, the creator of Answers.com, plans to purchase Lexico Publishing Group, the parent of Dictionary.com.

Through the deal, Answers will inherit a collection of Web properties that "generate approximately three times the total page views of Answers.com," according to an Answers statement.

In addition to Dictionary.com, Lexico also owns Thesaurus.com and Reference.com.

Lexico Web sites had a total of 11.5 million unique users in June, Answers Chairman and CEO Robert S. Rosenschein said in a Tuesday Webcast.

"The combined properties (of Answers and Lexico) would have reached a total of 22.5 million unique users in June, ranking it as the 28th largest U.S. property. This leap would rank us higher than such well-known Web properties as ESPN, WebMD, Craigslist and iVillage," said Rosenschein.

But it is the Dictionary.com URL that seems to be generating the most interest, both from Answers and the general public.

About 85 percent of Lexico traffic is directly from people who type the word "dictionary" in a search engine and then click on Dictionary.com from the results. Lexico, however, only makes one third as much per page in advertising revenue as Answers.com, according to a company statement.

Answers said it plans to capitalize on that search phenomenon by directing people to more than just dictionary content.

Dictionary.com and other Lexico sites will soon begin to see more of the encyclopedic content offered by Answers from sites like .

Answers said that combining encyclopedic content from Answers properties with Dictionary.com's URL popularity will help it to be more competitive against Wikipedia, the open encyclopedia.

The $100 million transaction, pending closing conditions, will likely be completed by fall.

Think it's a coincidence that today's "Word of the Day" is gallimaufry?