Inspired by this this thread I want the straight dope please, seems to be a wide variety. Which is the correct way? (If there is a correct way)
Hmmm. I thought I described it in the referenced thread; maybe not clearly. My wife is a native Arabic speaker and I have met lots of guys named Ahmed.
You start with “ah” as in “father”, then force out a little extra air at the end (the h is a transliterated Arabic letter with that kind of a sound), with a very brief pause. The unvoiced h sound is very strange for English speakers to pronounce at the end of a syllable when followed by a consonant but it’s not that hard to do once you’ve heard how it’s supposed to sound. Imagine you are saying “ahead” but you stop before you get to the “e” sound (before your voice starts again–it’s so ingrained that people are not conscious that your voice turns off for the h then back on again for the e).
Then “med,” which actually is not an exact correspondence to an English e sound but halfway between “med” as in medicine and “mad” as in pissed off (which explains why it is transliterated both as “e” and “a”).
Maybe it is regional then as many other native Arabic speakers disagree with that in the links I provided in the other thread.
Are you sure they are from the same country as CookingWithGas? many countries speak 'arabic" and Achmed is a common nam ein several other Muslim nations that aren’t Arabic speaking.
The one dude I know named Achmed says “awk K med” with a sort of spitting noise in the middle, and “awk” a little like clearing your throat.
They almost certainly are not. I think that’s the point.
I’m willing to bet there are differences in pronunciation of the name “Ahmed/Achmed” from region to region, which are all spelled the same way in Arabic. If this is the case, then insisting that there is only one correct way of saying the name aloud would be incorrect.
Sort of like if a Mexican would insist that the correct and only way to pronounce the Spanish word “tortilla” is “tor-TEE-yah”.
My wife is Egyptian, that’s how she says it, and almost all the Ahmeds I’ve met have been Egyptians, and that’s how they say it. There could be some regional variation. Note that a prior post suggests that some pronunciations of this name may be Muslims who are not Arabic speakers.
There is a gutteral “ch” type sound in Arabic but I believe that is not the letter used in this name. I’ll check on the Arabic spelling.
Hello I speak Arabic.
Ahmed is spelled in Arabic Aleph Ha mim dal, the Ha is not the same as the Ch/Kh sound (the one that sounds like the German Ch). Ha, it is a heavy H sound, not at all like the Kha (like the name Khalid.)
Ahmed is pronounced by Arabs, Ah med. No Arab - no matter where in the Arab world - pronounces this Akhmed, which means in Arabic “Dying” Muslims who are not Arab of course have trouble with Arabic and pronounce this wrong. Achmed is a spelling and pronunciation lots of Pakistanis use, but they do not speak Arabic.
So Cooking With Gas is right and the other opinions are entirely wrong.
No expert here, but a quick consultation with someone who is fluent and widely familiar with Maghrebine, Levantine and Gulf dialects of Arabic backs up CookingWithGas.
The “ahk” or “awk” pronunciations, wherever they may be used, do not appear to be normative dialectical Arabic. Though I’m sure more than a few western-raised Arabs may have defaulted to those versions just based on social influence. Like ‘Caitlin’ suddenly being pronounced ‘Kate-lin’ in the U.S. :).
- Tamerlane
OK, I gotta ask. What was the original pronunciation?
Roughly “kathleen”, though “catch-hleen” or “cat-hleen” might be closer with the proper accent :).
- Tamerlane