Tahrir, Ahmed, Bach

"Tarir" Square

Feb 8th 2011, 14:30 by R.L.G. | NEW YORK

I'VE JUST heard David Kirkpatrick, in a short video from the New York Times, describe the central locus of the Egyptian protest movement: "Tarir Square", or something like that. This isn't to fault Mr Kirkpatrick, because he's obeying the rules of English phonology. English has an h sound, of course, and you say it when you say "horse" or "Hosni". But one rule of English phonology—virtually every English speaker knows this, but very few know they know it—is that an [h] can't come at the end of a syllable. We have words like ah and oh, of course, but they're pronounced [a:] and [o:].

Arabic has a different set of phonological constraints (no letter "p", for example, which is why the borrowed word parliament comes out barlaman). But Arabs can end a syllable in one of two different h-like sounds, one pronounced far back in the throat (a pharyngeal, in the lingo), sounding raspy to an English-speaker.  One handy description I've heard of this sound is "imagine blowing a candle out with your throat."  This is distinct from another h-sound much like English's, and also distinct from a third, more truly fricative sound, usually translated kh, like the last sound in Bach.  Got it?

That first h-sound is the one in names like Ahmed.  Since we don't have that sound, English-speakers often approximate it with the Bach sound, and people who can't do that will then fill in a k-sound, which is a neighbor to [kh]. This is why you can hear some English-speakers refer to an Ahmed as "Akhmed" or even "Akmed".

The other option is to leave the h-sound out entirely, and that's what some people do with "Aamed".  It's also what Mr Kirkpatrick did by saying "Tarir" for "Tahrir"—it's just too weird for most English-speakers to say the [h] at the end of a syllable. If you're unafraid of looking a bit like those journalists who try too hard to sound authentic, try it, and free yourself from your phonetic constraints in the name of Tahrir—"liberation".

Source: http://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2011/02/phonology