>>BTW, if I am badly mistaken here, what is then the way to represent a short u as in butcher, so that nobody can mistake it for either yoo (as in use) nor uh (as in us)?
>
>See:
>http://www.thefreedictionary.com/butcher
>
>Then pronunciation key:
>
>http://www.thefreedictionary.com/_/pk.htm
>
>I can't draw the symbols here - but I guess it is close to 'took'

Yep, but I really wouldn't support such proprietary systems of phonetic script - Webster has one, too, and I've seen pretty much one per dictionary and no overall standard. I'd rather use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipa xor establish a voice connection...

What I meant, if you write oo, everybody will know it's a long u as in "fool". Now what do you write to have it, without a doubt, pronounced as oo in took, or u in butcher (which sound the same to me). If you write u, it'll be a yoo; if you write uh it'll be a short ah, as in butt. There's no one or two character combination that I know of that can represent it, without "as in {word}".