I speak Georgian. It's not that bad, once you get past "bakaqi tsqualshi kikinebs....."

I have grown up having my first name pronounced "Call-eed" "Kay-lid" "Kawl-eed" "Kawl-ed" "Kho-led" and a bunch of other goof pronunciations of what is to Arabic, Urudu, Berber, Turkish, and Farsi speakers a very simple and common name. It is understandable that Americans and other speakers of non-X languages would mispronounce names from other languages. But "Eye-rak" or "Eye-ran" are not the result of an accent or some ambiguity in transliteration, they're just wrong. In English we don't usually end up pronouncing vowels that come before consonants that way. It's the same reason it isn't proper to say "Eye-retate" when saying "irritate". Or "Eye-rands" when saying "errands." But I think it shouldn't really matter so long as the speaker knows what they're talking about and can locate the country whose name they're mispronouncing on a map. Also, "al-Qaeda" contains two sounds English speakers do not have. Both "ghyn" and "ayn." The Q represents the ghyn, which is [king of] like a K pronounced far back in the throat, and often resembles a hard G more than it does a hard Q or K in English. It really makes no difference in the end. Few commentators in this country can pronounce either Ahmadinejad or his country, and fewer gan pronounce the names of any number of Arab, Central Asian, Chinese, or Turkish leaders (let's hear these folks say Erdogan properly). For that matter, let's hear anybody from anywhere pronounce some of the longer names of some southern African leaders. It's not really all that important.

The 196x edition of Fowler's Modern English Usage had an excellent section on how to pronounce French words when speaking English. I had never actually considered the issue, but as Fowler, or his editors, pointed out, changing from English to French in mid-sentence requires some serious oral contortions, and it sounds awkward. If nothing else, someone trying to follow such speech would not be able to "adjust" their ears in time to follow the transition. I have never seen a similar guide for other languages, but I know that compromises are necessary. Of course, when a language adopts a foreign word as its own, all bets are off. When saying "I don't give a flying footer." there is no need to pronounce the "t" in "footer" in the French manner. Place names are even worse. The French call the capital of England Londres; the English call the capital of France Pair-iss. We use the Greek name for Misr, the land of the Nile. These are at least conventions. The Chinese do not call their country China, and the Japanese do not call their country Japan. The conventions vary. The English call their opponent in the Falklands War The Argentine. We Americans call it Argentina. Spanish speakers compromise and call it Argentina, as we do, but they add the article "la", as is customary in England, so it is La Argentina. It is all very confusing, and it gets worse when you consider the variant pronunciations. JFK always called that island off Florida with its Bay of Pigs Cuber. I remember hearing Veet-nam an awful lot over the years. Is Eye-Rack all that much different?