How to say: Ramadan
A weekly guide to words and names in the news from Catherine Sangster of the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Pronunciation Unit.
"As the festival falls today, I've chosen Eid al-Fitr as this week's pronunciation. Arabic pronunciation will vary slightly according to region, but the anglicised pronunciation we recommend is 'EED uhl-FIT-uhr'. It marks the end of the month of Ramadan, for which we recommend the pronunciation 'ram-uh-DAAN', although 'RAM-uh-dan' is also common. In some countries such as Turkey, the spelling and pronunciation is different: 'ram-uh-ZAHN' instead. "
(For a guide to our phonetic pronunciations, click here.)