« Repositioning | Main | Why Horse Race » Pronounciations05 Nov 2007 03:48 pm Apparently, the BBC has a BBC Pronunciation Unit dedicated to telling people how to pronounce things. Here's everyone's favorite Iranian president: Today's pronunciation is Iranian President Mahmoud AHMADINEJAD (sometimes also spelt AHMADINEZHAD). Our recommendation is mah-MOOD ah-mad-in-uh-ZHAAD (-h is pronounced in 'Mahmoud' and in 'Ahmadinejad') based on the advice of the BBC Persian Monitoring team. It seems I've been saying "Siniora" all wrong. Comments (21)
The capital of South Dakota is PEER, not Pee AIR as the spelling would indicate (Pierre) 
Mah-MOOD make my heart beat right out of my chest.
David, close but not exactly, a bit less throat scratching. Here's another way of understanding the name: It's a compound. 'Ahmadi' is a very common Persian surname. 'Nejad' means family or clan. So 'Ahmadinejad' means 'of the Ahmadis,' or something like that. The way supposedly educated people in the US pronounce it, ahmaDEENuhjad, puts stress on the one place it definitely can't be, because that's a bridge between two words. It should be ahmadineJAD, as the BBC has it. Bonus points: Ask your Persian friends why the name "Ahmaghinejad" is funny.
David, close but not exactly, a bit less throat scratching. Here's another way of understanding the name: It's a compound. 'Ahmadi' is a very common Persian surname. 'Nejad' means family or clan. So 'Ahmadinejad' means 'of the Ahmadis,' or something like that. The way supposedly educated people in the US pronounce it, ahmaDEENuhjad, puts stress on the one place it definitely can't be, because that's a bridge between two words. It should be ahmadineJAD, as the BBC has it. Bonus points: Ask your Persian friends why the name "Ahmaghinejad" is funny.
How do you pronounce Mankiw?
*Everybody's* favorite? I don't know about you but I've always been partial to Khatami. Even Rafsanjani. Neither are as flashy as the current guy but I think they had soul.
*Everybody's* favorite? I don't know about you but I've always been partial to Khatami. Even Rafsanjani. Neither are as flashy as the current guy but I think they had soul.
Thank you, Daniel.
Yeah, but the BBC just tells you how to pronounce things in England. How are you supposed to pronounce them in Kentucky? I'll bet the BBC doesn't have squat to say about that, now, do they? Mmmm hmmmmm .....
Now I just need another guide to tell me how to pronounce "ZHAAD". Also, it's nice that they tell you that -h is pronounced but give no indication to how it should be pronounced. In Mah, does it just modify the sound of the vowel, or should there be a breathy "huh" at the end, or should it be more gutteral?
ZHAAD -- the ZH sound in the middle of "measure", plus the A in "father," plus D. When H follows a vowel in Persian, it doesn't modify the vowel (the A's in both Mahmoud and Ahmadi are short, as in "cat"), The H is not guttural, but more breathy --just the usual H sound found in English, but at the end of the syllable.
Daniel and DavidinNY, Before Daniel starts opining on things he doesn't really know about, take it from a native Persian speaker that the 'h' in Ahmadinejad is NOTHING like the 'ch' in Hebrew, Yiddish, or German. Why? Well, because Persian actually has a letter usually transliterated as "khay", which has the same sound as the Yiddish 'ch', and that's NOT the letter that is used to spell Ahmadinejad in Persian. The letter 'h' in Persian is often pronounced exactly like the 'h' in English in formal speeches and newscasts. In everyday speech, the 'h' is actually often silent, so that Ahmadinejad is pronounced 'amadeenezhaad', where the 'zh' is like the 'j' or 'g' in French (e.g. aubergine). It is also not the letter used to spell the name Ahmed. A lot of Americans pronounce Ahmad as 'Acccchhhmad', which to us Middle Easterners is seen as slur because doing so is designed to make us look more foreign than we actually are. The same goes for the name "mahmood". It is not "Macchhmood", as I've heard from numerous, shall I say pro-Israel Lobby commentators like Podhoretz et.al.
What I meant to say was that the Persian letter "khay" is not used to write the name Ahmad, whereas the normal 'h' is used instead of 'ch'.
I prefer "ak-muh-DEE-nuh-jad", preferably in a Texas accent.
I prefer "ak-muh-DEE-nuh-jad", preferably in a Texas accent. And with the next word being "new-kew-lar".
Hi Persian Reader, Also, as a native English speaker, and someone who studied Persian from a Tehrani, and an Isfahani, and a translator of the Gathas of Zoroaster, and conversed with Tehranis, Iranian Kurds, and Iranian Jews, I can also say with complete confidence that 'he' is not exactly like English 'h', the difference being comparable to the difference betw,een labial and ulular 'l' sounds, with the English 'h' voiced considerably closer to the front of the mouth. I've not only studied modern Persian but ancient Persian and Middle (or Pahlavi -- that 'h' again), so I'm hardly someone who can be said to be uninterested in the correct usage of the Persian language. And I must say that sneering and taking offence at earnest efforts to get pronounciation right --- which is what westerners who say "Acchhmed" are attempting --- strikes as a kind of chauvinistic narcissism of the small difference.
Oh, I'll cut the suspense. 'Ahmagh' means 'ass' or 'donkey', so 'ahmaghinejad' sort of means 'son of an ass.' I've just heard from an Iranian friend that they're also calling him 'avalinejad,' which is sort of a contrived way of calling him a primate. ('Avali' means 'first').
But, Matt, if we pronounce things right we miss the opportunity to hear the bigots at Fox News laughing at the furriners and their funny names.
The Voice of America site also maintains a list of pronunciations for names in the news: http://names.voa.gov/DailyAction.cfm The sound clips are very helpful.
Daniel, I could not presume to equal your philological expertise. But as a native English speaker with a graduate degree in linguistics, who learned Persian from Tehrani parents, I don't quite follow your explanation. Technically, [h] is not "voiced" anywhere. Not only are the vocal cords not involved, it has no place of articulation besides the glottis -- in English, Persian, or any language. I imagine you might be picking up on the fact that many Persian *vowels* are produced closer to the back of the mouth than their English counterparts, and this is affecting your perception of the adjacent [h]. (Also? There's no such thing as a "ulular" [l].) In the unlikely event that any other English speakers are still reading this ever-geekier comment thread, please just use the same damn H sound as in English.
Comments closed November 19, 2007. |
Search
Subscribe to this blog by Email Books by Matthew Yglesias
Recent Comments
Recent Posts
Weekly Archives
Categories
|
Copyright © 2008 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
| 
Heads in the Sand
Is that "-h ... pronounced in 'Mahmoud' and in 'Ahmadinejad'", pronounced like the gargled "ch" in Yiddish, German, etc.?
Posted by David in NY | November 5, 2007 4:01 PM