Saira: Pronunciation...?

I was talking with some friends and we ended up wondering how to pronounce "Saira".
Any good guesses? Perhaps Nifflas could reveal a phonetic edition of the name/word?

Pretty please...

I think I heard that it's supposed to be pronounced something like "Saeerah" and some website suggests "SAIYRah" but to be honest I don't know it better than anyone else unfamilear with the name. It's originally an Arabic name, today it's fairly common in Pakistan or India in case you want to ask someone!

I just realize that I tend to default to names that are hard to pronounce.

Saira is a name of middle-eastern origin, so it might be difficult to get an accurate native-like pronunciation. Charlotte mentions the name several times in her videos, and I'd assume that Nifflas pronounces it the same way.


Edit: or just see what he wrote above.

I've pronounced it 'S?ira', but now that I've made some research I'm not sure whether the correct pronunciation is 'S?ira' or 'Sa?ra'. I guess I'll end up with the wrong one like I did with Juni.

My personal guess would be short a, and emphasis on the i, but I don't know at all to be honest.

I used to know someone called Saira and we always pronounced it "Seh-ra"

Heh, whenever I see a foreign name (unless it's German, since I know that has different pronunciation rules), I always pronounce it like this:

I follow these pronunciations for vowels:
a -> AmE short "o" (bot)
e -> AmE short "e" (met)
i -> AmE long "e" (bean)
o -> AmE long "o" (moat)
u -> AmE "oo" (spoon)

I contract these two vowel pairs to familiar one-syllable English counterparts:
ai -> AmE long "i" (type)
ei -> AmE long "a" (bait)

And I add a short trill to any "r"s.
Frankly, I have no clue what to do with accents (except ñ and ç), so I tend to ignore them (which is WRONG WRONG WRONG, but what can I do?).


So I get:  "SIGH-r[dl]ah"

But then again, that's just me trying to apply the same rules to every non-English language in existence when I only have experience with about two or three. So, needless to say, it only works for 10% of words in each of two or three languages.

Those rules will most likely lead you to mispronounce almost every name ever, or at best, give you a very heavy accent. Most languages have very different pronunciations of very similarly spelled words, so treating them all the same way isn't the way to go.

Yes, but it's between that and guessing randomly.

Well, since it's Nifflas' game, I say we let his opinion decide as no one appears to know the actual pronunciation.

As far as we know (forget everything he has said about origin) he made up the name and thereby set the sound of the vowels.

And so forth... 

Yes, but it's between that and guessing randomly.

Guessing is a lot more accurate than deliberate mispronunciation.

You could always pronounce is Saria like I do.
Because you know, I'm cool like that.

Poor Nifflas can't ever give exotic names to his games...

This is at least the third time the pronunciation of a word from his games is debated. I remember this happened with Knytt and Pteranodon.

Poor Nifflas can't ever give exotic names to his games...

This is at least the third time the pronunciation of a word from his games is debated. I remember this happened with Knytt and Pteranodon.

...and the next time it will happen AGAIN I shall obtain some inspiration from Robert Popper's bank naming skills.

i pronounce it "sigh" "Rah" like to sigh and... well "rah"