An American politician who has become famous in the last couple of years is named "Rashida Tlaib". She was born here, but her parents and husband came from Palestine.
Americans talking about political news all pronounce her name as if it were spelled "Talib", with the A and L in her last name reversed from the way it's written, so this spelling and pronunciation can't both be right. The simplest explanation would be that the letters A and L got written in the wrong order when her husband Fayez Tlaib (or someone earlier in his family) first needed to have that name recorded by people who use Roman letters. Is that what happened?
If not, this leads me to separate questions for the parts before and after the L:
After the L, is there supposed to be the diphthong "ai", as it's written, or just the monophthong "i", as they pronounce it? (And why would a diphthong that's common in English get replaced with a monophthong by American speakers? That kind of thing is usually done to sounds that people find difficult to pronounce, not sounds that are common & easy for them.)
And before the L, is there a vowel sound? (If so, it really should be represented by a letter in the romanization, even if it's not in Arabic.) And if there isn't, does the L lateralize the preceding T, as it would in some English accents (such as Ian McKellan's and Judy Dench's) and Central American languages like Nahuatl? (That's one sound at the end, a voiceless lateral affricate, the same thing that often ends up as a "c" in words like "Aztec" and "Olmec".) I haven't heard of Arabic having such a "tl" cluster before, but I don't know what else to think about the lack of a written vowel even in the romanization.
Americans talking about political news all pronounce her name as if it were spelled "Talib", with the A and L in her last name reversed from the way it's written, so this spelling and pronunciation can't both be right. The simplest explanation would be that the letters A and L got written in the wrong order when her husband Fayez Tlaib (or someone earlier in his family) first needed to have that name recorded by people who use Roman letters. Is that what happened?
If not, this leads me to separate questions for the parts before and after the L:
After the L, is there supposed to be the diphthong "ai", as it's written, or just the monophthong "i", as they pronounce it? (And why would a diphthong that's common in English get replaced with a monophthong by American speakers? That kind of thing is usually done to sounds that people find difficult to pronounce, not sounds that are common & easy for them.)
And before the L, is there a vowel sound? (If so, it really should be represented by a letter in the romanization, even if it's not in Arabic.) And if there isn't, does the L lateralize the preceding T, as it would in some English accents (such as Ian McKellan's and Judy Dench's) and Central American languages like Nahuatl? (That's one sound at the end, a voiceless lateral affricate, the same thing that often ends up as a "c" in words like "Aztec" and "Olmec".) I haven't heard of Arabic having such a "tl" cluster before, but I don't know what else to think about the lack of a written vowel even in the romanization.