Aaliyah: I’ve heard her name pronounced different SO many times I really don’t know now who to believe. Is it UH-LIE-UH or AR-LEE-AR or AR-LIE-AR? Well, its kinda hard to “phoneticize” it, but you get my drift!
For eg. do you say Ali (as in Mohammed) then “yah” or Arli as in “gnarly” & uh as in “uh-huh”…
I have no idea what the “correct” pronunciation is, but I’ve always thought it was “eye-LEE-yah” or “ah-LEE-yah”
I’ve never heard anything but ah-LEE-yah.
ah-LEE-yah
or if you’re lazy
uh-LEE-yuh
If you’re not familiar with her music, I heartily recommend it; she has an amazing voice.
I’ve always pronounced it
AH-LIE-YAH
I think that there’s a problem with us trying to write out the pronunciation if you speak an r-less dialect, psychotropic, while the others of us posting here speak an r-full dialect. /ar-lee-ar/ might actually be an approximately correct pronunciation in your dialect if (as I suspect) you drop the /r/ sound within or at the end of a syllable. Note: “Dropping an /r/” actually means you pronounce the vowel sound in the syllable slightly differently. It doesn’t mean that you just ignore the /r/ sound.
Radio DJs and the guys on MTV have always called her ah-lee-yah, so that’s what I call her.
She starred in the movie Romeo Must Die. There’s a scene where one of the characters mentions that her character looks like Aaliyah. I think he said “get your Aaliyah-lookin’ ass down here!” Aaaaaanyway, he pronounced it “ah-LEE-ah”.
Whitney Houston, who I believe is Aaliyah’s aunt, pronounces it “ah-LIE-a”
From MTV.com:
“…Aaliyah pronounced Ah-Lee-Yah (“highest, most exalted one” in Swahili)…”
Anyone fluent enough in Swahili to confirm?
I have seen interviews with her where she said that it supposed to be pronouned with the first part sounding like “Ali” as in Muhammed Ali. the “uh” sound after is short.