How do you pronounce "Iraq"?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

So which is it?

ear-rack’
eye-rack’
a-rack’ (“a” rhymes with “sun”)
i-rack’ (“i” rhymes with “sit”)

2

I-rack…

ryhmes with “I- rack”… or " Eye-crack" or “I-whack”…

3

To my understanding, the ‘a’ in ‘Iraq’ is pronounced like the ‘a’ in ‘father’.

i-'räk.

4

Evidently, Iraq.

5

i would assume something like ee-ROCK or, possibly, EE-rock, since the English short-A is fairly uncommon outside Germanic languages, but I bet Jomo Mojo has the definitive answer, so perhaps we can wait for him…

6

Eye-Rock’, says me.

7

oh, and I suspect the “q” really is a sound more guttural than an English “k,” perhaps a sound sometimes transliterated as “gh” or “kh” from Arabic languages to English…but once again, I defer to a linguist…

8

Well, in the interests of being different I imagine, the BBC and other media in the UK pronounce Iraq with the first syllable i as in it and the second syllable raq as in back.

9

Oh, and my neighbours, who left Iran when Ayatollah Khomeini returned home in 1979, pronounce Iran as Persia.

10

“Iran” and “Iraq” are most approximately pronounced
(to the American-English-speaker’s ear) as: “ee-RAHN” and
“ee-RAHKH.”

The “eye” pronunciation is just sloppy.

11

The reason I posted is because a lot of newscasters seem to favor ear-rack’. Sounds strange.

12

Ho ho ho.

Prepare to be “harrumphed” soundly by Esprix.

13

JRDelirious is correct.

  • Tamerlane
14

I-rawk

15

*Thanks for the endorsement, pulykamell. :slight_smile:

The first syllable in ‘Irâq is a short vowel /i/ as in “it.” The second syllable sounds like English “rock” except that the letter q is an unvoiced uvular stop, articulated farther back than English /k/. It’s articulated with the back of the tongue on the uvula. A sound that does not occur in English. At the beginning of ‘Irâq, there is another sound, the ‘ayn, transliterated by the mark ‘. That is a voiced pharyngeal fricative, made with a tightly constricted pharynx (in the middle of the throat).

As for Îrân, the first syllable is a long vowel, pronounced “ee.” That’s in contrast to the short i in Iraq. The second syllable sounds like “Ron” as in Reagan.