In American English, it’s usually pronounced “al-KAY-duh” or “al-KUY-duh”
The announcers on the Beeb say “al-kuy-EEE-duh”.
In recent weeks on NPR, though, I’ve heard several interviewees pronounce the name of al-Qaida as “ah-kah”.
I know Arabic words and spellings can vary when transliterated into other languages and writing systems. Still, though … ah-kah? Where did this come from, and why is this pronunciation coming into vogue now?
Just one little bumpie.
Presumably when you say they’re pronouncing al Qaida as “al Kah” you mean it’s “al Kah-ida” or something like that, right? Not just “al Kah”?
In Arabic, it’s القاعده
With that assumption, it should be pronounced something like this:
“al” - flatten the “a” sound, take it towards the back of your throat, so that it sounds more like “uh” than “ah”.
“Qa” - The “qaf” character is best pronounced as a “k” by an English speaker. If you want to make it sound more like a real Arab would say it, try saying “ka” as usual, then moving it back in your throat, so it’s slightly muffled and comes out like “kuh”. The “a” in “Qa” should be stretched slightly into an “ah” or “uh” sound, like the “a” in “al” above.
The ayn character - Between the “Qa” and the “ida”, there’s a kind of stop in the word. It’s hard to do without practice, but it means that you certainly don’t run the vowels into each other.
“ida” - this bit is simple. It’s just “id”, as in bid, lid, or hid, and “ah”, with a definite “h” sound at the end, like if you said “hah!” to a particularly stupid suggestion.
So, all together, it’s something like “uhl Kuh-id-ah”.