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Comment by s20n

5 hours ago

I don't know where they even got that pronunciation from. The wikipedia page says "Karakoram (English: /ˌkɑːrəˈkɔːrəm, ˌkær-/, Urdu: [kaːɾaːkoːɾəm])"

none of which is [kerəkɑːrəm] as the author suggests

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karakoram

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Karakoram

I would naturally read ⟨aw⟩ as /oː/ (as in e.g. ⟨hawk⟩), rather than /ɑː/. The weird part is the [e] — the only thing I can suggest is that they’re one of those people who raise /æ/ to [e] in some positions.