The pronunciation of 'Aryan'

Question

An (English) acquaintance of mine pronounces the word Aryan as /ˈɛːrɪən/ (~Aerian). I have only ever heard it pronounced /ˈɑːryən/ (~Aaryun). I have it on good authority that the word comes from Sanskrit's ārya which is pronounced /ˈɑːryə/ just as I expected.

The ODO cites 'Aerian' as the correct (as these things go) British pronunciation while accepting both to be acceptable in American English. Webster is another dictionary that accepts either variant. MacMillan, just to be difficult, only accepts 'Aerian' as the correct pronunciation for American English, and either for BE.

Now, in all my years of watching Nazi flicks, I don't believe that I've ever heard the word pronounced "Aerian"; I'm pretty certain that I would have noted the difference if I had. Is it a recent change? Or is it a regional peculiarity? How do the Germans pronounce it?

Also, how would the word indo-aryan be pronounced?

Answer 1

The /ˈɛryən/ pronunciation is just a result of English phonology processing a foreign borrowing that starts with the letters AR.

Aryan is a borrowed word in all languages outside the Indo-Iranian subfamily of Indo-European. The rest of the world pronounces it as some variant of [arjan], which comes, as noted, from Sanskrit ārya /a:ryə/ 'compatriot'. Therefore, /'aryən/ is a perfectly acceptable English pronunciation, and the only acceptable one when using the term in its modern Indian sense.

Any use of Aryan (outside scare quotes) that refers to Germany or white racism is a result of romantic interpretations of 19th century German linguistic scholarship (e.g, Grimm's Law), which unearthed the prehistory of the "Indo-Germanic" (as I-E was then called, from names of the Eastern- and Westernmost families) languages. It was all very exciting, apparently. See also Wagner, Mad King Ludwig, German Empire.

The AHD of IER says that Skt ārya comes from the PIE root *aryo- 'Self-designation of the Indo-Iranians'; other descendants of the same root are Iran and, surprisingly, Eire -- Celtic languages sometimes retain PIE roots that are otherwise lost in the Centum group.

None of these are English words, and so English treats them the same way it treats all borrowed words -- it changes the pronunciation until it tastes right. That's all.

Edit:

I almost forgot, another reason to pronounce Aryan /'aryən/ is because Arian /'ɛriən/ usually refers to Arianism, a very important variety of Christianity that was the religion of the Ostrogoths in Italy, and the Visigoths in Spain. The only Gothic texts known to exist are translations of various parts of the (Arian Christian) New Testament.