We write "Sheik" and pronounce it like the shake in "Shake the snow off your shoes." In reality it should be "Sheikh"... as in "shake-ha". I can't get the "h" sound right. Every time I say a name like "Ahmed" my students laugh. To me the sound is guttural. When I try to do it sounds like I'm about to hack something up.
Then again, after four years of Spanish I never did learn to roll my rr's. My German brain raised in America is apparently not capable of a Spanish "rr" or an Arabic "h".
Update: Ann pointed out that writing “Shake-ha” sounds too much like a common girl’s name here. It’s really more like “Shake-heh”
Either way I can’t make the sound.
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