I’ve always “pronounced” is “KAY-tar” in my head. I’ve never had occasion to speak the name aloud.
Law Monkey got it.
It is an initial glottal stop (throat gargling) which is hard enough for English speakers in the middle of a word. Very hard to swallow your tongue and choke out that throat gargle on an initial.
Welcome back, Qatar.
Isn’t there someone named Paul from Qatar on this board? I’ll wait for him to weigh in.
I’ve always heard it pronounced “KAY-tar.”
“I don’t know about you, but that guy in the gold lamé turban is really pinging my Qatar.”
I’ve always heard the first syllable emphasized: KAH-tar.
My 1990 Merriam-Webster lists the following pronunciations:
Qa·tar geographical name \ˈkä-tər, ˈgä-, ˈgə-;, or, sounding like "cotter, gotter, gutter, respectively).
This is somewhat noteworthy, as this predates the Gulf War of 1990, which is probably one of the first times the name started appearing with any frequency in the press.
M-W.com has since then added:
kə-ˈtär\ (like kuh-TAHR). (Which is the way I would say it.)
I was in Qatar one weekend for R&R while stationed in Iraq in early 2008. The only people I spoke to were foreign workers though (who make up about 90% of Qatar’s residents). Can’t say I’m really an expert.
But in general, in Arabic, my understanding is that the concept of “stress” applied to a certain syllable doesn’t exist. So, it wouldn’t be “KHA-ter”, nor “kha-TAR”, but more like “KHA-TAR”, with equal stress on both syllables.
But if you’re going to Americanize it, either way works okay. I never understood why I should learn another entire language just to refer to a foreign location or person.
I think that’s more like it, as memory serves. I know I’ve been berated for saying kah-TAR by people familiar with the country, so I stopped.
OK, now that the OP has been thoroughly addressed, how do I pronounce the name of the elephant, Babar?
I grew up saying it “BA-bar”, only to find, 40 years later, that my best friend grew up saying it, “ba-BAR”.
Some native French would be of some assistance here, given that the character’s creator was French.
Hadn’t thought about him in years, but I think I always heard BAE-bar, with the first vowel the short “A” sound in “flat” or “hat.”
I try to imitate the Arabic pronunciation of “Qatar.” I do the same with “Qantas,” since it lacks the “u.”
I feel ridiculous, if not pretentious, trying to pronounce words or names in the native tongue; especially when any native sounds don’t exist in English phonetics and even moreso when a reasonable approximation has been adopted as the English pronunciation.
Why go through the overkill in effort, unless trying to appeal to locals while visiting or legitimately talking to natives in their own tongue?
Trying to convince Americans to say “cutter” is like trying to convince them that it’s not kah-BULL, Afghanistan, nor is it cah-DIZ, Spain.
I don’t know what’s correct, but I have always said it most closely to ‘guitar’. I would not, however, take the typical American Talking Head’s pronunciation as a guide, however. Most (all?) of them regularly mispronounce ‘Tienanmen’ whenever it is in the news.
At least there is no controversy over how to *spell *it, like Ghadaffi.
Ga-Daffy?
There was a great scene on the Daily Show one time where John Oliver was interviewing a man from Qatar. The man pronounced it something like “kah’tr” and John Oliver corrected him. "I think you’ll find it’s “ka-TARR”.