/I/raq, /aI/raq, /a/raq and /schwa/raq

[Orin Hargraves]

>>1. Where did /aI/raq come from? Or is this vowel shift merely
of a kind with /aI/talian?

My vote is that it came from the same place that /aI/talian came from. Eye
pronunciation?

>>2. Do some Britons shift it as well? Who?

Those who don’t know any better. Newsreaders, at least for the BBC, do a
better job because of the BBC’s pronunciation unit, which strives for accuracy
and sensitivity. With so many variants to choose from, perhaps we can
designate the /aI/ prons as one of Rima’s “jerk pronunciations.”

>>3. If Arabia begins with an a in English, why not Iraq? Or am I
way off base here, mishearing an equivalence in the first vowels
of the two words as pronounced by Iraqis and other people from
the Middle East?

This is an interesting orthographic question and I wonder: was the English
spelling of Iraq perhaps modeled on its neighbor Iran? In fact they begin with
different sounds in Arabic. You are right that in Arabic, the initial sounds
of Iraq and Arabia are the same: the voiced pharyngeal fricative consonant
“ain” that English listeners find quite startling unless they have been
forewarned that the speaker is imitating the bleating of sheep. In light of
this, I think anodyne schwa is a good way to begin the word in English. --Orin