I was listening to the WTF podcast with Marc Marron, and he (and I think a guest) were talking about the ubiquitous noodles, and pronouncing their name ‘RAY-men’.
Is that a common pronunciation? How do you pronounce it?
rah-men
RAH-men.
Ha-ha. I remember watching a TV courtroom case when a character said “Roman noodles”, and the judge corrected the man/woman, saying that it was “Ramen” noodles" in the setting. At first, I was kind of confused on the phrase “Roman noodles”, though. Amusing, huh? 
They probably just made a mistake. But there is a certain Japanese dish of cold noodles called “ray-men”. I doubt they were discussing that exact dish though.
Rah-men, though ever since I took Japanese I do have a nasty habit of pronouncing it as the way you would read ラメン (Japanese speakers: the “ー” was omitted intentionally since in English I don’t make the length distinction), which means the “r” is more of a flap.
Though as far as weird pronunciations go my mom says romaine. Like the lettuce. She claims that everyone she knew in college said it that way, though I find this dubious since I think the only common type of instant noodles when she was in college would have been called “Oodles of Noodles.”
Just looked it up – reimen sounds absolutely delicious.
I think Roman noodles would be pronounced ‘spaghetti’.
It is! 
I’ve only heard ramen by people who think foreign words are all too highfalutin. It’s something I would expect someone like Archie Bunker to say.
Larmen.
Archie Bunker would just cut thru the crap and say “noodles,” no? 
Rah-men is close, but not quite.
Rah-mən.
I did actually get as far as copying the schwa character from Wikipedia in order to put it in the OP, but then realised to be consistent I would have to use all phonetic transcript characters and I don’t know them, and nor would many people reading the thread.
“throat-warberler-mangrove”
I used to frequent a Japanese restaurant where they spelled it ‘larmen’ on their menu. I just thought it was a bad spelling error, since they used ‘rah-men’ when speaking.
Dear Lord,
Thank you for the tasty noodles.
Ramen.
Just yesterday we stopped to try a Japanese place we hadn’t been to before and I had the shoyu ramen with pork and kamaboko (fish cakes). In fact, I’m finishing off the leftovers at this very moment. Yum.
But what really blew me away was something I hadn’t gotten around to trying before – zaru soba cold buckwheat noodles with soba tsuyu and scallions and wasabi on the side. Fandamntastic! So refreshing.
The Japanese really are the masters of food. I think Japanese cuisine should displace Chinese as one of the top global cuisine traditions. I’d call it Japanese, Indian, and French.
I used to say ray-men, then I heard other people say it the “right” way, felt for a time like an ignorant, uneducated rube, and then started saying rah-men.
When I hear Japanese people say it, it sounds like they’re dropping the last consonant, so it’s more like [ra 'me:]
I’m in the midwest and hear it both ways about equally.