What is the pronunciation of Myanmar.

May 23, 2008 12:26 PM

What is the pronunciation of Myanmar?

While waiting for the day when I can go back to calling it Burma, the country is called Myanmar. I always pronounced it as MYAN-mar with two syllables. Now since the cyclone, Myanmar is in the news and it seems that overnight, newscasters are pronouncing it as MEE-yun-mar with three syllables.

I am listening to NPR right now and they are talking about delivering aid to MEE-yun-mar.

Funny thing is, I can't remember ever hearing the latter pronunciation before the cyclone. It seems like an almost overnight change. So what is the 'standard?'

Please note this is the US, so we are talking about rhotic mairkun pronunciation.

posted by xetere to writing & language (20 comments total)

Not actually an answer but I've always heard it pronounced with three syllables, never the way you were pronouncing it.
posted by JaredSeth at 12:34 PM on May 23

I've always heard it as MEE-yun-mar (though perhaps a little closer to MEE'un-mar, without an emphasised "yuh" between the first and second syllable).
posted by scody at 12:36 PM on May 23

As far as anecdote is worth anything, I've only heard "MYAN-mar" when it's comes up in conversation in Portland, OR. (Often in proximity to "ahem, BUR-ma", for that matter.)

There was a bit of exploration of the pronunciation over on Language Log recently; note here that it's not even clear that there ought to be a rhotic pronunciation, if the concern is correctness. I wouldn't be surprised if there are distinct parallel pronunciations to be found in the wild, then, and no definitive "correct" American pronunciation.
posted by cortex at 12:37 PM on May 23

The BBC has four different ways to pronounce it.
posted by desjardins at 12:38 PM on May 23

Dictionary.com's pronunciation guide shows three syllables as well - but more like my-ahn-mar, unless I'm reading it wrong in my totally sleepy haze.
posted by Bakuun at 12:39 PM on May 23

I say mee-ANN-mar, because that's what they said on Seinfeld.
posted by yellowbinder at 12:40 PM on May 23

I would have pronounced it as my-ahn-mar (having not watched the news on TV for nearly a decade and therefore never heard it pronounced)

I don't understand how you are pronouncing it with only 2 syllables, whichever way I look at it, I can't see how 'myan' can be pronounced as a single sound.
posted by missmagenta at 12:50 PM on May 23

I don't understand how you are pronouncing it with only 2 syllables, whichever way I look at it, I can't see how 'myan' can be pronounced as a single sound.

Look at it as maybe the result of tightly compressing a pair of syllables if you like: m'yan? With no actual vowel break from the initial nasal 'm' sound and the opening of the 'y'. It's certainly not as long or discretely divided as e.g. "mee-yan" would be. (Analagously, maybe, I don't pronounce "tsunami" as "tuh-soo-nah-mee", even though "tsu" as an initial cluster isn't normal in English.)
posted by cortex at 12:55 PM on May 23

I concur with the BBC myan-MAR approach; it's closest to what it sounded like in Burmese speech as I recall it. Some people (up around Mandalay, I think, or slightly south of that) tended to drop the final R, but that could have just been a matter of my own misperception (slurred sounds are weirdly tricky for me).
posted by aramaic at 12:57 PM on May 23 [1 favorite]

missmagenta, I guess I use that little offglide. Sort of like how people pronounce mute. I don't think anyone says Mee-yute with two syllables. to me mee-yan for Myanmar is like pronouncing mute as mee-yute. But apparently I am pronouncing it wrong so I'll just say Burma.
posted by xetere at 12:59 PM on May 23

Sort of like how people pronounce mute.

Ah, that's a much better and less hand-wavy way of communicating the idea, xetere.
posted by cortex at 1:01 PM on May 23

I've always said my-ahn-mar.
posted by rhapsodie at 1:07 PM on May 23

So you're pronouncing it Mean-mar?
posted by missmagenta at 1:35 PM on May 23

three syllables, like so many upthread say: mee-ahn-mar.

[and in case you're curious, "myitkyina" up north in kachin state: mitch-EEN-ah; "shinbwyiang": sheen-bwEE-ang.]
posted by garfy3 at 1:46 PM on May 23

[pls stop with burma comments, thank you]
posted by jessamyn at 2:30 PM on May 23

FWIW, Ben Stiller does a commercial for UNICEF about it, and pronounces it:

MAI (rhymes with "eye") uhn mar. Emphasis on the first syllable.
posted by frosty_hut at 2:56 PM on May 23

My-ahn-mar, and it rhymes with unrar or untar or Myanmar.
posted by theiconoclast31 at 4:44 PM on May 23 [1 favorite]

I don't understand how you are pronouncing it with only 2 syllables, whichever way I look at it, I can't see how 'myan' can be pronounced as a single sound.

That's exactly why the (incorrect but easy-to-say) three-syllable pronunciation exists (though it is odd that it's only started getting widely used since the cyclone). The poster and cortex have explained how to say it in two syllables. The closest recommendation is this:

The BBC Pronunciation Unit recommendation is myan-MAR, based on the advice of native speakers of Burmese in the BBC Burmese Section.

Except that THERE IS NO -R IN MYANMAR. Excuse me, it's a topic that annoys me supremely. (See this LH post for more.) So it's really myan-mah (which is of course what the BBC transcription implies, aimed as it is at speakers of non-rhotic dialects). And as I say in the linked post, "the country's postal service is called Myanma Posts and Communications, for Pete's sake."
posted by languagehat at 5:15 PM on May 23

MEE-an-mar is how the chief pronounced it on the Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego TV show.

It would be very difficult for me to believe she could be wrong about a matter pertaining to geography. So I'm not going to try. I suspect it's one of those things it's just hard for native English speakers to pronounce correctly so we make up our own way that is intelligible to other native English speakers.
posted by crinklebat at 9:30 PM on May 23

It would be very difficult for me to believe she could be wrong

And yet she was. Seriously, you're taking a kids' TV show as your reference bible?
posted by languagehat at 7:24 AM on May 24