Hacker News Reader

When it comes to the "I" sound in words, American English almost always has both pronunciations (e.g. semiconductor, semifinal).

Interestingly, Merriam Webster's pronunciation for all these words (including Iran), have it without the "I" sound.

View on HN

There was a discussion about this on NPR recently. According to the guest, the underlying phenomenon (which goes back a long way) is avoiding long-As, an aversion to sounding like snooty Boston Brahmans. It strongly correlates with political and socio-cultural affiliation, and with words that people are self-conscious about or otherwise are deemed to be more likely to signal affiliation. Iran is specifically discussed.

> snooty Boston Brahmans

What on earth are they?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Brahmin

EDIT: The radio show was Science Friday, October 15th episode, "Why do politicians talk like that?", https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/science-friday/articles...

Oh, people who moved in recently and act all full of themselves? In Scotland we call those "tourists".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com