How do you pronounce Iraq and Iran?

Americans used to call them I-rack and I-ran. (Remember the song "Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb I-ran"?) Now most people pronounce them more like their natives pronounce them. Foreign place names are always like that - some of them are pronounced like the natives do and some have Americanized pronunciations, but there's no rule.

It's going to depend on where the speaker is from. Eye-rack and Eye-ran are just as incorrect as saying Eye-talian. But whether it's pronounce EE-Rack or EAR-ack (the way I say it) depends on where you're from. A native British English speaker might produce the 'rawk' and rawn' sounds but a native American English speaker would not - unless they were practicing pseudo-intellectualism (I'm smarter than all of you rubes) like Obama did with his 'Pock-ee-ston.

Also, vowels are sounded differently in different languages, and sometimes even differently in the same language, according to the individual word. In many languages, the letter A is sounded as a soft A, while the E is sounded as a hard A, the I as a hard E...and that's where you can get EE-Rack from.

So, whether it's EE-Rack or EAR-Ack, both are correct.

I also hear Ock and On, which are going to, again, be based on where someone is from.

I pronounce the letter "I" in both cases as I do with itch, inn, international, issue. Also Islam because there is a connection there to infidel so they seem to like it that way.

The 'i' should be pronounced as it is in ink,it,ignore etc.

Most of the time, when words in other languages are transcribed, the letter "i" represents the "ee" sound, just as it does in Spanish. English is the only language in which "i" is pronounce as in "bike".

Most Americans say ear-RAQ and ear-RAHN, but in their languages, the two syllables get more equal stress.

Eeh-rahk / Eeh-rahn (*not* Eye-rak / Eye-ran)

The "I" in each is properly pronounced as "I" in "Italy".

Iraq - See: " https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKBlopQoByQ "

Iran - See: " https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNCqzuLAei4 "

i pronounce them eran and eraq. i am from the middle east and that is the way it is meant to be pronounced. but many americans butcher the names of the countries as well as the names of the people and everyone accepts it as such. someone above commented about Italian being pronounced eye talian and i think they made a good point. bravo mike.

like they're spelled...? eye rack, eye ran it's spelle "I"RAQ "I"ran ,not eran & eraq...