Anonymous Iran

eyeoniran

Is it Mehdi or Mahdi...is it the same? How do you pronounce them and are they pronounced the same? And how do you pronounce Mousavi's wife's name? I always stumble over that one when I am reading!

Lara

just want to add that NiteOwl's pronunciation guide, whilst very helpful, are specifically for North American readers and speakers (because of what sounds they usually associate with certain letter combinations). If I tried hard I could produce an IPA version based on what I THINK his accent is, but this may not be helpful for people who do not read IPA...

Doesn't make his guide useless - just might want to keep an American/Canadian accent in mind when you are reading it, as well as how you would pronounce it in your own accent.

example: In my accent (New Zealand) the sound in "law" rhymes with "four" - /lɔ:/ and /fɔ:/ (same vowel). Whereas in an North American accent it could be (not always) /la:/ and /fo(w)ɹ/ - and even that changes depending where in North America. so yeah just use your judgment!

Unregistered

Before June, I had only seen the name transliterated as Mehdi. Wikipedia transliterates مهدی کروبی as Mehdī Karrūbĩ, which fits with what I have seen, and Mehdi Bazargan's wikipedia page lists both transliterations as correct, so Mehdi and Mahdi are probably not two separate names.

Maybe its pronounced either way, but if it can be only one, Mahdi is probably not gonna be the correct transliteration from Farsi into the roman alphabet. If I'm wrong, its because I'm ignorant and only trying to reason my way through this one.

Tomilo

Is it possible that you could also add some pronnunciation guides of the slogans of that the opposition are using like 'death to the dictator' (Marg Bar Diktator??) and 'Allah-o-Ahkabar'?

Also are 'h' pronounced softly as in English or is it a harder sound from the back of the throat I here some say?

Thanks!!

Unregistered

There are both in Persian. For example, in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's name, or in the name of the city of Tehran, or in Zahra Rahnavard's name (because someone pointed out difficulty in pronouncing her name earlier in this thread) they are pronounced like an english h, though in places that sound odd for an english speaker (after the vowel rather than before--which might be the reasoning behind the old transliteration of Tehran as being Teheran). Always found it annoying when someone would say Makmoud Akmadinejad (indefensible unless you are willing to say Saddam Kussein or I kan kas cheeseburger and not think you sound like an idiot), which I heard a lot since 2005.

But There is also a gutteral kh sound that shows in some words (like khub, which means good) and names (like Khatami) and stuff.

You can find pronunciation of phrases like "marg bar diktator" and "Allah-o Akbar" on youtube videos. There's one by Al-Jazeera English from late June that's about 30 minutes long that describes the protests before the media was kicked out of Iran which has videos of people chanting such phrases and more.