Take a spin around a globe. Do you recognize all of the country names? Depending on when your globe was created, some of these names might not even exist anymore. Ceylon, Mesopotamia, West Germany, Prussia, Yugoslavia, Zanzibar — none of these would appear on a modern map.
For the countries that are still around, can you pronounce all the names? Country names are often based on native languages, and they don't always translate easily to English. Even when the spelling of the name doesn't differ much, the pronunciation might be very different between languages. And correct pronunciation does matter. Think about your name. If you're a "James," and someone constantly calls you "Jamie," even after numerous reminders, you might think they're being rude. When you learn a little bit about the language of a country and its proper name, you're showing respect.
Here are five countries with names that are often mispronounced by English speakers. Once you learn about the correct pronunciations, it will be easier to pass along the knowledge. Maybe you'll even be inspired to plan your next vacation.
Belarus
Many English speakers pronounce the name of this small country (formerly part of the USSR) as "bel-AR-us." The name is actually pronounced "bell-uh-ROOS." The official languages of Belarus are Belarusian and Russian; both Slavic languages have a different style of pronouncing vowels from American English. The "u" is pronounced like "oo," and the accents tend to hit the final syllable.
Moldova
Moldova is another former Soviet republic located in Eastern Europe. When faced with the name, English speakers tend to put the accent on the middle syllable: "mole-DOH-vuh." Native Romanian speakers, however, spread the emphasis more equally across all three syllables: "mol-doh-vuh." The country takes its name from the Moldova River, the site of the first capital city.
Qatar
The Middle Eastern country Qatar uses Arabic as its primary language. The sight of a "q" without an accompanying "u" can be confusing for English speakers, leading to a pronunciation of "cat-AR." But if you pronounce the name correctly in Standard Arabic, you almost swallow the final syllable — "CUT-ter." In some dialects, the country's name is pronounced "KIT-ar."
The Maldives
You'll find the series of islands known as the Maldives off the coast of Sri Lanka in the Indian Ocean. Americans might pronounce the country's name by breaking it into recognizable syllables: "MAL-dives," with an American accent elongating the final "i." However, this final syllable is correctly pronounced with a long "e" sound: "MAL-deeves."
The name may come from a Sanskrit phrase that means "garland islands," referring to the general shape of the islands. Sanskrit has more open vowel sounds than American English, as well as a vowel structure somewhat similar to Spanish, so the "i" is pronounced like "ee."
Iraq
You might be confident in your pronunciation of this Middle Eastern country's name, but while most Americans would say "eye-RACK," the correct pronunciation is "ee-ROCK," with the "i" pronounced as a long "e." The same principle applies to its neighbor Iran, which is not "eye-RAN," but rather "ee-RON."