Disclaimer: Somewhere on this blog are multiple grammatical mistakes, spelling errors and obscure Star Wars references.

Saturday, March 03, 2007

Eye Ran

You know what I've always wondered? Why westerners pronounce Iraq & Iran as "Eye-Rak" and "Eye-Ran" respectively. Or why they call it, "Aye-Rab" instead of Arab.

I guess, I can understand how they manage to change their pronunciations of the, 'a' sound, but never the, 'i' sound. I mean, hasn't anyone else thought about this as well? How can it not come off as strange to the rest of the world? I've met all kinds of Europeans, Canadians, Brits, and even Australians who can pronounce it just fine. Then you walk up to an American and they go, "Eye - Rak is a victory for democracy!"

Lookit, they can say, 'idiot, 'imagine', 'intense', 'initiate', 'invent' just right. But ask them to say the names of these countries and all of [edit] a [edit] (Thanks Farhan!) sudden they develop a drawl. Of course, I'm not stereotyping here, and I've met many Americans that DO pronounce it the way it should be but this is something that pops up in your mind...

Oh, and for all those of you who would say, "it's a proper noun, it can be pronounced any way we want it to," here's a newsflash. Iran and Iraq are NOT ENGLISH WORDS! They can only be pronounced in one way. Learn.

Eye'm outta here...

xx

M

4 comments:

Farhan Rehman said...

"and all of the sudden they develop a drawl."
all of A sudden :p

Farhan Rehman said...

goto my blog..
new post..
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Tauqeer Jamadar said...

(before I start... my spellings suck, and so does my grammar... so don't you dare pick on me !!!! :D)

Hey! Its funny you talk about it here... we were having the same discussion at work - on exactly the same issue - why do they pronounce it as Eye-raq......

The more "English literate" amongst us reckon it must be something to do with breaking the word down to various number of syllables - so I-raq & I-ran.

The other argument is that all Americans are dyslexic and need to break words down or have a break when they pronounce long words........ I......raq

I know what the true story is.... but I reckon it must be something to do with syllable manipulation in the Americanish language....

What do you think??!

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have fun :)