Expert: Mojtaba Parsa - 1/31/2005

Question
Mr. Parsa,
I'm an avid speech and debate competitor preparting for an upcoming tournament. I want to do John F. Kennedy's "Ich Bin ein Berliner" speech and relate it to what's happening in Iraq right now. I need to know how to translate "Let them go to Iraq" and "I am an Iraqi" in Farsi. I have no knowledge of the Arabic language or its alphabet. Would you mind translating these two phrases for me? Romanized letters and pronunciations would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
Tyler

Answer
Hello Tyler!
If you want to translate "Let them go to Iraq" in Farsi, you should say "Begozar Anha Beh Aragh Beravand." /begozar an ha: be (ae)ra: (*) ber(ae)v(ae)nd/ The words between slashes are the pronunciations. To the (*) mark, there's no similar voice in English like it. To pronunciate it, just be careful about what German people pronunciate while they're speaking. It is usually written as "Kh" or "Gh". And the translation for "I am an Iraqi" is "Man Araghi Hastam." /m(ae)n (ae)ra:(*) i: h(ae)st(ae)m/
Note: To (ae), reduce these letters' spaces and you see it sounds like "A" as in "(A)pple".
Regards
Mojtaba.