The Aya Toll Booth
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Following up on the DP's April Fools "AI-yatollah" article, an Ayatollah pun from Admiral James Stavridis, USN, Ret.:
— Admiral James Stavridis, USN, Ret. (@admiralstav.bsky.social) April 8, 2026 at 7:57 PM
Wikipedia explains the etymology of Ayatollah:
The title is originally derived from the Arabic word Āyah post-modified with the word Allah, making ʾāyatu llāh (Arabic: آية الله). The combination has been translated to English as 'Sign of God','Divine Sign' or 'Reflection of God'.
The Admiral's joke was presumably a response to this: "Trump says he’s considering ‘joint venture’ with Iran for Strait of Hormuz tolls".
Coby said,
April 9, 2026 @ 10:20 am
I know a little bit of Arabic and no Persian, but it seems to me that the Arabic vowel that is normally transliterated as u becomes o when it comes from Persian, e.g. Muhammad -> Mohamed, Muslim -> Moslem etc., hence ayatullah -> ayatollah.
Philip Taylor said,
April 9, 2026 @ 11:17 am
Is "Muslim -> Moslem" particular to American English, Coby ? I (a Briton) know the word only as "Muslim". As to "Muhammad -> Mohamed", yes, I am familiar with the "u" -> "o" here, but would retain the double "m" to yield "Mohammed"
Bob Ladd said,
April 9, 2026 @ 1:13 pm
@Philip Taylor: According to Google n-grams, "Muslim" and "Moslem" have very similar histories in both British and American English. "Moslem" was more common in both varieties until the 1940s, but neither was very common compared to the enormous rise in frequency the began in the 1950s and 1960s and continues, more steeply, until the present day. Almost all of that increase involves the spelling "Muslim", and "Moslem" is in slow decline.
Part of the problem here involves the fact that English U often spells the STRUT vowel, whereas in other European languages it corresponds to FOOT or GOOSE. But for speakers of many other languages the STRUT vowel, if it occurs at all, is a short version of the PALM vowel, and older English transliteration practice often used U to transliterate that short PALM vowel. A good example is "Punjab", which if transliterated from the relevant South Asian languages should be "Panjab". But well-intentioned people who are concerned with giving the "correct" pronunciation of foreign place names (a perennial topic on Language Log), and who know that, say, Umbria should be pronounced with [u] in the first syllable, are likely to attempt "Punjab" with FOOT or GOOSE in the first syllable.
Are there English speakers who pronounce "Muslim" with STRUT?
J.W. Brewer said,
April 9, 2026 @ 1:26 pm
I grew up with the then-normal AmEng "Moslem" but have not continued to insist on that given the tidal shift to "Muslim" in more recent decades. But to the extent I say "Muslim" I say it with STRUT rather than FOOT, because the people (or shadowy impersonal forces) who apparently wanted me to stop saying "Moslem" (with LOT/PALM) didn't bother to specify otherwise. Spell it as "Mooslim" if you care about that! In my mouth, it's like "muslin" with a slightly different end. (I think I probably use STRUT for "Punjab" as well, but I'm not sure how often I have occasion to say it out loud.)
AntC said,
April 9, 2026 @ 4:10 pm
Stavridis is late to the game. I first heard this pun about ten days ago on 'What's going on with shipping'/Sal Mercogliano Youtube channel, and he'd got it from some Twitter feed, I think. (He does claim to have invented 'Toll Booth' for whatever was going on to pass around Larak Island rather than using the official shipping channel.)
@PT, I (a Briton) am equally familiar with both spellings muslim/moslem. I don't think they entail a different pronunciation, but probably people make one up.
Are there English speakers who pronounce "Muslim" with STRUT?
'Muslin' cloth gets a STRUT. There might be interference.
Martin Schwartz said,
April 9, 2026 @ 5:44 pm
This is the deal with u > o: There are 2 different phenomena at play:
1) In Arabic as she is spoke, the Classical Arabic vowel u
is often realized as o, at least in certain positions (e.g. when it isn't stressed) throughout the Arab world, although dialectal factors are alos involved. Thus the phoneme /u/ is often realized phonetically as [o].
Generally speakers of Arabic, unless they are linguists, are not aware
of the difference. For further details an Arabic phonetician should be consulted.
2) In Iran, Classical Persian short i regularly became e, and short
u regularly became o, in both inherited Persian words and Arabic loanwords. This is connected with the change of long e to long i,
and of long o to long u (sorry, finding macrons is hard for my eyes).
In Afghanistan it's a matter of region, while in Tajikistan the situation
is closer to Classical Persian, but there are differences.
As for the t of Arab. āyatullāh, original *-at becomes -a and a final h is written, so āya spelled with final h, but when a vowel follows, -t
is preserved, but written as an h with the ¨ (2 raised dots of the
letter t written above the h. Oh, one more thing: Arabic /a/, when it is not phonetically a back vowel because of the presence of consonants with phonemic alveolar tension which backs all vowels, is pronounced æ, which could be colloquially pronounced as e when unstressed,
and in other positions esp. in North Africa.
Martin Schwartz
cameron said,
April 10, 2026 @ 10:56 am
note that the 'u' in Hormuz, as in Strait of Hormuz, should really be an 'o'. I've long suspected that the traditional transliterations of many Persian/Arabic place names reflect Hindi/Urdu pronunciation as heard by British administrators in India during the 18th and 19th centuries. Someone already cited the name Punjab, which is would have been Panjâb or Panjaab if based on the Persian pronunciation. Hindi/Urdu tends to reduce unstressed syllables, and the traditional transliterations represent the /ə/ of reduced syllables as 'u'
Peter Taylor said,
April 11, 2026 @ 2:46 am
Bob Ladd wrote:
I don't think I've ever heard it pronounced any other way in English, although I have seen the spelling Moslem in older texts. OED lists /ˈmʊzlᵻm/ and /ˈmʌzlᵻm/ as British English pronunciations, where the latter is the STRUT vowel in British English; and it gives /ˈməzl(ə)m/ and /ˈmʊzl(ə)m/ for U.S. English, where the former is the corresponding STRUT vowel.
Martin Schwartz said,
April 11, 2026 @ 5:31 am
@cameron: Indeed. Hormoz: I recently heard Trump,
accidentally or not, pronounce it "Hormoz"
Martin Schwartz.
Martin Schwartz said,
April 11, 2026 @ 5:31 am
@cameron: Indeed. I recently heard Trump,
accidentally or not, pronounce it "Hormoz"
Martin Schwartz.
Philip Taylor said,
April 11, 2026 @ 7:47 am
Unlike Peter (two comments above), I have very rarely heard "Muslim" pronounced with the STRUT vowel. What I normally hear is the FOOT vowel. UNIV: British English.
Mark Liberman said,
April 11, 2026 @ 11:05 am
@AntC: "Stavridis is late to the game. I first heard this pun about ten days ago on 'What's going on with shipping'/Sal Mercogliano Youtube channel, and he'd got it from some Twitter feed, I think."
Sal's YouTube channel is great, independent of pun priority. But the important thing about Stavridis's contribution is not that he invented the pun, but that someone with his status (board chair of the Rockefeller foundation, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander, etc.) found it appropriate to post it.
Kate Bunting said,
April 16, 2026 @ 11:21 am
I've long been aware that 'Moslem' was the traditional English term now replaced by 'Muslim', but without knowing any more than that the latter was apparently considered 'more authentic'. (I would pronounce it with the STRUT vowel.)
I was aware that 'Panjab' was more correct – I supposed that the 'u' transliteration must have been done by people who used the southern English 'u'! I had also noticed that the town which Kipling called Umballa (in 'Kim') is now called Ambala.