Learn English – How would you spell “Tehran” in English for it to be pronounced “correctly” (i.e. as in Persian)

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Native English speakers do not pronounce the h in Tehran so it is pronounced like "Teran". But in the original pronunciation in Persian the h is pronounced, resulting in /tehˈɾɒːn/.

Is there any alternative for the spelling of Tehran to be pronounced "correctly", i.e. as in Persian, by a native English speaker?

(I'm asking this question because a friend is asking me for the correct spelling of his name Mehran which with the exception of the first consonant is pronounced like Tehran.)

Edit: Bahrain (البحرین) is another similar word with the h dropped in its English pronunciation /bɑːˈreɪn/, while in Arabic it is /bɑːħreɪn/.

Best Answer

There is no way to truly force this pronunciation in English.

In English, we just don't pronounce the /h/ sound at the end of syllables. Because it is not a part of our phonological grammar, it can be difficult for a native English speaker to articulate the sound, or even perceive the sound at all, in that context. So, even if you pronounced it correctly and asked the native English speaker to repeat after you, they might still leave out the /h/ sound.

Since there is no context in which an English speaker pronounces /h/ at the end of a syllable, there is no spelling convention that indicates it should be done to someone who is unfamiliar with Farsi.

It is similar to trying to write something in katakana that will make a native Japanese speaker pronounce "cat" as we do in English. Japanese speakers have the /t/ sound, but it can't occur at the end of a syllable, so the closest approximation would be "kato" (or "katto" but let's keep it simple).

There are two spellings available to you, each one sacrificing one feature in favor of another.

  1. The standard spelling "Tehran" maintains the two-syllable prosodic form and indicates the "h" for those who are familiar with Farsi Latinization and phonology. But it will not cause an average speaker to pronounce the "h".
  2. The alternate spelling of "Teheran" (which was mentioned in the comments) puts the "h" in a context where it can be pronounced (at the beginning of a syllable — "he"), but in order to do so, adds a vowel and therefore another syllable. This is called epenthesis and is also how Japanese (among many others) repair unpronounceable clusters. The disadvantage is that you now have three syllables instead of two; also, you still aren't guaranteed to get pronunciation of the /h/ sound — between vowels, an "h" in an unstressed syllable often goes unpronounced in English.
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