The country is “Iran”, pronounced “i-rahn”, with a short “i” and a long “a”.
I always used to say “Iranian” with a short “a”, so that it sounded like “IrAYnian”, the first “a” sounding like “day” or “say”.
Then I heard a voiceover on Channel Four by British-Iranian comic Omid Djalili advertising a season of Iranian cinema. He pronounced it “IrAHnian”, with a long “a”, the sound being like “car” or “artist”.
Figuring he knew what he was saying, I changed my pronunciation.
Then somone told me off the other day for mispronouncing it and now I’m confused.
I have always pronounced it EEE - rahn and therefore EErahnian.
I do this because I first heard of the country as a boy from my mom’s second husband who is from Tehran. They met while he was in LA getting an engineering degree from SoCal.
So I figured for whatever reason everyone else was mispronouncing it.
Ee-RAHN is how the Iranians themself ponounce it, but if I’m speaking English I’ll pronounce it eye-RAN, because that’s the proper English pronounciatian. Otherwise I might as well just call Italy “Italia” and Germany “Deutchland” (or my own country “Yis-rah-ELL”) and come across as a total dink.
No, it’s not necesarily the proper English pronunciation. I don’t recall BBC newsreaders saying eye-ran. It seems to be an American thing. EE-Rahn is perfectly acceptable in English.
I’m American, and I say /i ran/ (vowels as in Leon or peon - ee rahn). In more casual or fast speech I probably reduce the /i/ to a schwa. The pronunciation /ai r{n/ (like in the song. "I ran, I ran so far away . . . ") sounds to me distinctly unsophisticated, like “eye-talian”. I’m pretty sure the newsreaders at NPR use the same pronunciation as I do.
You also sometimes hear “ihrahn” where the first vowel is the short i in bit. There isn’t really a single way to say it, but “eye - ran” comes off to many people as unsophisticated.
I think this is an education/class issue. Most non-college grads in the US (which is about 3/4 of the population) are likely to say EYE-ran. Many people also say EYE-talian…
Eye-ran is a pronunciation that, I would say, comes from following the rules of how to pronounce an unfamiliar word in English (or at least American English). Ee-rahn would be based on a broader knowledge of pronunciation. That is, if you have enough exposure to the pronunciation of languages besides English you find that the letter ‘i’ often represents ‘ee’ and the letter ‘a’ often represents ‘ah’ (or something very similar to those sounds).
I don’t actually know what pronunciation Iranians prefer (except that we seem to have testimony from people who know Iranians that it is “ee-rahn”), but without knowing anything about the pronunciation of the language which it comes from I could make an educated guess that it would be something like ‘ee-rahn’.
Which is more proper in English? I don’t know, but either method of arriving at the pronunciation seems natural and valid to me. I do think it is good form to try to make your pronunciation of a place name sound as much like what the people living there call it wherever possible. There are certainly cases like Germany/Deutchland where this is impossible to conform to local pronunciation without entirely changing the standard word, but this is hardly the case with Iran.
‘Ee-rahn’ probably will sound a bit odd to many Americans, but not so much that they won’t understand what you are saying.
I cringe when I hear ‘eye-talian’ for Italian. From an English pronunciation standpoint it makes plenty of sense to pronounce it that way, but the initial ‘eye’ vowel is really far off from the ‘ee’ in the Italian original and English speakers ought to be able to hear the difference easily. The standard english ‘ih-TAL-yuhn’ is much closer to the original (though still noticably different). The ‘eye-ran’ vs ‘ee-rahn’ issue is essentially the same thing, the only difference for me is that I know more about how to pronounce Italian than Persian (or is it better to say Iranian?). That and the fact that ‘ih-TAL-yan’ seems to be the standard whereas ‘eye-ran’ has some claim to standardness.
We also should not forget that we are unlikely to be able to pronounce the word ‘Iran’ exactly as Iranians themselves do. We may come close, but there will likely be subtle differences in our pronunciation. Also it is likely that Iranians from different areas of the country will have different pronunciations from each other.
Argh! I answered about ‘Iran’, which the OP knew, and not about ‘Iranian’, which the OP was asking about.
The same principles apply, in my opinion. ‘Ee-rahn-ian’ is probably the pronunciation that most closely mimics actual Iranian’s usage. And if that is your goal (a worthy goal, in my opinion) then I’d use it.
“Persian” or “Farsi” (“Farsi” being the name of the language in the language.) I prefer “Persian” since in my experience plenty of Persian-speakers use it, and I just plain think it’s the English word for it. As far as I’ve ever heard, it’s pronounced “ee rahn” - or more like that than any other English pronunciation - in Persian, but I can only think of a few times that I’ve heard a Persian speaker say the name. One of the producers at NPR is Davar Ardalan, who’s Iranian, and her first name is actually “Iran”; she certainly pronounced it “ee rahn”.
As for Iranian, I’m not even sure whether I say /a/ (like the name Ron) or /e/ (“rain”) when I say it. Both sound equally acceptable to my ears. Certainly, both are common in the United States. I don’t think I’ve ever heard “eye ran ian”, though.
My wife pronounces it “ear-rahn-ian” so I’ve gone with that. She was born & raised there though she’s Armenian, not Persian. And “ear-rahn” for the country. I used to pronounce it “eye-rain-ian” and “eye-ran” before I met her though.
shrug I’m American, and I pronounce Iran and Iraq as ee-RAHN and ee-ROCK, respectively. I don’t think it’s a British thing. I’ll say “eye-RAN” and “eye-RACK” if I’m doing a mock-cowboy accent, but that’s about it.
For the purposes of the discussion, I’m Australian and would say “eh-rahn”, and can’t decide between “eh-rahnian” and “eh-raynian”. Both sound OK to my ears. EYE-ran and EYE-rack sound atrocious, IMHO.
In India, we pronounce it exactly the way rippingtons_fan described. However, my dad rents out a spare appartment to a couple of Iranian students, and they pronounce it as ee-rahn and ee-rahn-ian.
About every American I know pronounces it “eye-ran,” including President Nuc-u-ler, but a few people, mostly my Baha’i friends, pronounce it “ee-rahn,” as do the Iranians in my circle.
