Attention you annoying little man (Wolf Blitzer, CNN correspondent)
It’s not NOT NOT pronounced “Eye-ran.” If you’re calling a country out as one of your top three enemies (AoE), then you should probably learn how to pronounce the name of the country. It’s not difficult. I’m sure you can manage.
It’s pronounced “ee-rawn” and even if you have difficulty making the ‘r’ sound correctly, it’s better than “eye-ran.”
Flock of Seagulls isn’t in it with you.
:goes back to avoiding CNN:
Indeed. Once we capture their ziggarut, their morale will collapse, leaving us alone to offer Mr. Blitzer as a gift to the gods in a gory ceremony atop the Tower of Babel.
Nah, sorry I disagree. The correct Amercian pronunciation is eye-ran.
I hate it when news announcers dummy up a phony accent for a single word: NPR was terrible about it in the '80s: Neee-haaa-waaaaaah-gwah for example, or Kay-bek instead of Kwuh-bek.
It sounds phoney otherwise. Use a consisitant pronunciation throughout the broadcast.
Heck, you live in France, do you call the country that keeps invading yours “Deutchland”(sp), “Allamande”(sp) or “Germany”?
Yeah! I heard an NPR guy pronounce it Ka-TAR this morning. It’s actually QA-tur, as in rhyming with gutter. The Q sound doesn’t exist in English (make it at the very back of your throat), but dammit, I want newsreaders who speak fluent Arabic!
I think we might be expecting a little too much from the talking heads on TV.
Why not at least try to pronounce it correctly. I wouldn’t expect you to attempt the ‘r’ sound that is a part of the Persian language, but at least show that you’re making an effort to pronounce it correctly.
Frankly, I think it shows a great deal of conceit and ignorance to not bother.
Again, I understand some sounds (like the gutteral gh and kh) are difficult to pronounce, but in this case, ‘ee-rawn’ is just as easy to pronounce as ‘eye-ran’ and far more respectful.
Given that Anahita is Iranian, I would think that her pronunciation of Iran would take precedence over anyone else’s. C’mon, she’s not asking people to speak Farsi; she hust wants the name of her native land pronounced correctly. Goodness knows that when I live in Louisville KY, I used to get annoyed with people who called it Loo-ee-vill and not the correct Loo-uh-vul.
Sorry Fenris. You really lost me at the Quebec thing. I see absolutely no reason for you not to pronounce it like we do. I can understand you wouldn’t want to pronounce it with a heavy jouale accent, but come on. We anglophones up here pronounce it “Ke-bec”, you can, too. Gimme a freakin’ break.
It does say in the dictionary thet they are ee-ron and ee-rock. I hadn’t actually paid attention to this before because everyone pronounces them differently.
It’s not Deutchland, you are correct. I’m not sure why they call it Allemande, but interestingly enough, it’s also used in Iran. Only the ‘d’ sound at the end isn’t pronounced.