[Ads-l] pronunciation mess

James A. Landau JJJRLandau at NETSCAPE.COM
Sat May 28 19:53:05 UTC 2016


On Fri, 27 May 2016 13:33:30 Zone-0400 Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> wrote:
Subject: 

> I've noticed Bernie's "Eye-raq", 
>although I don't think I've heard him pronounce "Iran" one way or 
>another.  

It is my understanding that the "q" in "Iraq" signifies a glottal stop, which means that /eye rak/, /eye rahk/, /ee rak/, and /ee rahk/ are all spelling pronunciations, or if you prefer, spelling mispronunciations.

When I was in Jerusalem in 2007 our guide told us that in the Jerusalem dialect of Arabic the glottal stop is not used.  So we can picture Bernie giving a press conference in Jerusalem and an Arabic journalist asking him about /ee rah/.

- James A. Landau


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