How Do You Pronounce IKEA? | Improve Your Accent
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- čas přidán 18. 10. 2017
- Learn how to pronounce IKEA in English and in Swedish.
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How to pronounce NIKE
Ee kee yaa
It's no true. If you try to put the work IKEA on Google it will tell you that the British pronunciation is ee-kee-uh. Whereas the American pronunciation is Aa-kee-uh. Hence, according to Google all people use the American pronunciation.
L 🌼
I just found out they say eekeaa in japan and searched ikea pronunciation
I think we should all respect the Swedish roots of that word instead of making our own pronunciation.
@Adrian Jarvis Yet there's another (Korean) car brand where the pronunciation has been completely botched:
Hyundai, or 현대 as it's written in Korean hangeul. If 현대 was romanised as we normally romanise korean, it would be written 'hyeon/hyun-dae' and that's how it's supposed to be pronounced. The 'eo' is like the hard o sound in the word 'on' and 'dae' is said like 'day.' For some reason, though, (no idea why, because it doesn't make sense and it's not how Korean's usually romanised) it's was written as Hyundai in English, and so everyone has called it "hi-oon-dye."
Interesting!
I agree, when it's something like a company name..... but not for a word introduced into our language.
@@OEDODRAGON IKEA is a company name though..
I completely agree. In Italy we pronounce it the Swedish way and also when I speak English I pronounce it the Swedish way too. I think it's so arrogant from the Americans to Americanise everything.
Right
E-KEA
In Korea, We pronounce IKEA as Swedish way. 이케아, which sounds EE-KE-AH
The same in Spain 😄
Same in Turkey ✌
The adverts are like: we'll educate British people, maybe they'll learn how it's pronpunced in Swedish. Americans though? Americans are hopeless.
Excuseme, What the fuck?
Hahaha
Rozamunduszek n)
> they'll learn how it's pronpunced in Swedish. Americans though? Americans are hopeless.
@Rozamunduszek
presumably you have an equally low opinion of canadians too, since anglo-canadian ads for IKEA on the CBC pronounce it similarly to the american style. i guess all of north america is hopeless. the french canadians may be our only hope.
of course sweden is all the way on the other side of the fcuking world, so they're not likely to be too offended by that trivial verbal slip. hopeflly they have a sense of humour about all that.
@@ssranon it's a joke, not to mention it's over a year ago.
also the person said "adverts be like" so even if it wasn't a joke it's not like they have an "low opinion" of anyone.
So glad I pronounced this furniture brand's name correctly sine I was a KID! Glad I'm not ignorant to the Swedish roots of Ikea 🛋🤗💙💛
IKEA is an acronym and stand for Ingvar Kamprad Elmtaryd Agunnaryd
- with Ingvar Kamprad being the name of the founder
and Elmtaryd being the farm in the village Agunnaryd, where the founder came from.
Now you can ask yourself how you would pronounce the first name Ingvar and the location Elmtaryd and that will help answering the question what is the proper way to pronounce I K E A as a whole.
so how do we pronounce those names?
@Naught Guile, well, I'm a German and in Germany it is pronounced ee-kay-yuh (/-yaw). I don't know what your whole spiel about idiots is all about?
Btw, Ingvar Kamprad's father and thus the family name came from Germany, too, if you want to know some useless knowledge.
Is it not pronounced 'Ayngwar'?
@@MLennholm is it in English?
@@MLennholm In English?
In Italy the pronunciation is the same of the swedish one.
In belgium and the netherlands too!
In Germany too
in turkey too!
In Indonesian too
It’s uniquely in English who pronounce it differently because English is cursed.
I'm from Germany and we pronounce it the "Swedish" way. Actually we pronounce it the German way, but it sounds exactly the same.
I've talked about this with people here in Indonesia.
The original Swedish pronunciation is almost identical to the way we'd pronounce the letters in Indonesian, and yet there's this tendency for Indonesians to pronounce it like «aikiië».
I personally have always said «ikea», which is much easier to say IMO and fits to the Indonesian way of pronouncing the letters anyway.
The same thing happens with H&M btw, I say simply «haa-emm», which is closer to Swedish «ho-emm» instead of the complicated «eitch n emm».
Most Indonesian pronounce it as i - ke - a, with shorter e.
Whereas the Swedish pronunciation is i - kei - a with longer e vowel
As a Taiwanese, it’s funny cause growing up I heard “YYKIYA” and I always thought that was wrong, cause just like how westerners will always butcher Chinese shit, we will butcher theirs. When I went to America and they pronounced “AiKeeia” and j thought that was the correct pronunciation. Until I came to Europe and learned the real pronunciation is actually “YYKea”, which threw me off because apparently we Taiwanese ppl have been pronouncing it closer to the real version than Americans.
I'm a Canadian living in France. If I pronounce this the North American way "eye-kee-ah" everyone would either laugh at me or not understand me.
Same in Italy
@@AliCe-cc9qu In italian it would sound like the swedish version anyway.... I guess only the English language can pronounce this simple word so strangely
In Romania they look at you like you're on weed or something.
In Romania they don't understand you i told my mum it's eye-keh-yah in english but she grounded me and typed it in google translate where it says E-khe-yah
@@irinaelena225 I am from Romania too!/sunt romancă #romania regină pe lume
There is a Swedish company called Flygt; it’s a Swedish surname. In the US it is pronounced as “flight”, as in airline flight. The proper Swedish pronunciation is more like “flickt”. Swedish colleagues use “flight” when speaking to Americans, and “flickt” when speaking to Swedes. Which is the same thing IKEA’s CEO seems to do!
Here's one you've probably never heard before: in Singapore where I'm from we pronounce it as "ee-kya" 😂
same lmao
Malaysia too.. and I was wondering if we were the only weird ones XD
Thats how we pronounce it on the middle east hehe
@@priiyaparamasivam5487 true
same as us here in KSA 😂😂😂 I don't know from where we got it
Ikea in Swedish sounds very similar as how we native Spanish speakers would naturally pronounce it
In fact it is very similar
In Italy, we use the Swedish pronunciation, though the "e" is shorter and a bit less guttural than the one I hear in the ads. For once, we got a brand name right!
you just say it as it's written ! i-ke-a
SteveMcQueenz I feel like you wrote the same comment a few times xD
I knew you'd care
Ahaha that's true
Stavo giusto cercando altri italiani
I love your accent (and your kitchen).
Lol I live in Singapore and we pronounce it as ee-kia (instead of ee-ki-a) and I thought the correct pronunciation was actually the American one! Glad to know our pronunciation is actually somewhat close!
Same!
Yes I live in Hong Kong and we pronounce it as e-key-a here.
I also live in Singapore and there is an on-going debate in my class over the pronunciation of ikea
I also thought it was the us pronunciation
my parents(singaporean) always pronounce it as "e-kia" so like two syllables instead of three. however, since everyone pronounces it differently, i've decided to refer to it as "swedish meatballs and furniture place"
haha same.
typcial singaporean parent
"Swedish meatballs and furniture place!" LOL! That made me laugh! It's so true, though. And everyone will know which shop you're talking about. LOL! 😆🤣
In Japan, we pronounce IKEA like "ee-kay-ah" with an accent on "ee".
You can always grasp what the original pronunciation of a brand is in Japan since they'll use katakana most of the time!
Because pf the American pronunciation, I spent at least two years thinking "Eye Kee Ah" and イケア were different brands haha
I’m from the Philippines, I respect the SWEDISH way of pronunciation.
That's a very good video! Thanks for the very useful knowledge!
You're welcome :)
I'm Swedish so it's obvious how I pronounce it. That's how I heard it pronounced since I was a child. So the British or American pronunciation sounds strange to me. However, in France they pronounce it our way. Suppose it depends on how you pronounce the letter " i".
In Greece we pronouce the Swedish way
I'd say in german it's similar, maybe not quite the same
En Sud America muy parecido al sueco
There’s something very interesting About the IKEA adverts on German TV: Not only do they pronounce IKEA the Swedish way, but the whole advert is done with a Swedish accent. More interesting than that is the use of the familiar (du) form. Sweden uses (almost) exclusively the familiar (du) form, and so they have imported that into their German adverts. For several years it was (almost) the only advert on German TV which uses the familiar form. Also in every IKEA store, all the announcements are in the familiar form, as opposed to all other stores where they use the formal form. So IKEA is helping to slowly change the culture here.
i love that almost every languages pronounce it the correct way!!
It’s funny because in Taiwan, where we speak Mandarin Chinese, we use the more Swedish pronunciation, and we often get “corrected” by other people.
Same applies to Hong Kong where we speak Cantonese. The franchisee also gave IKEA the Chinese name "宜家" - literally means 'suitable for home'. Hard to think of any better Cantonese name if they had chosen to translate according to US pronunciation
For me, it’s pronounced as “Ee-kee-ya”.
Love your accent and enunciation of words.
In Italy we pronunce it the same way swedish do not because we respect swedish pronunciation but because the I K E A are pronounced in the same way. It's natural when a language is not your fist language to try to pronounce a word as you used to pronounce the letter in your language. Every time English speaker try to pronounce Italian word the sound very very English but we make the effort to understand what a native English speaker try to say. As we say in my country " the world is wonderful because it is varied". (Sorry for the leteraly translation)
Yes, modern English is weird.
They need double "e" (ee) to make the "i" sound, eventho the required letter is alreay there. Because they turned the letter "i" into "ay"
And "A" sound doesn't exist in the individual alphabeta pronounciation, because the letter "a" sounds like "ey"
Etc.
Updated the info because I wrote wrong tonal marker in the IPA. Changed now.
Native Swedish speaker from Gothenburg, I prounouce it ɪkê:a.
The acute accent indicating a rising tone on the stressed vowel. As most dialects of Swedish have tonal qualities even if they are not marked in typical writing exept when the words might be spelled differently. Words like buren can mean perfect particip of bära or carry or simply the cage depending on the tonal accent. :)
IKEA (eller KEA) har väl ändå grav accent...? Som i lära, måla, börja, etc.
Herr Friberger Ja helt rätt, ska ändra.
In Hong Kong, people mostly pronounce E.Kea as the Chinese name translated with the tone “Yikah”. Some of us do pronounce AiKea as British doing. It mixed in daily live but we all know it’s talk about famous IKEA.
In Singapore, my friends and I pronounced it the Swedish way.
This vid just added a lot of info for my presentation. I chose IKEA as the logo that i will be rebranding.
Thanks, it's very clear, in Thailand we say IKEA as in Swedish.
In Saudi Arabia they pronounce it as
Ee ke ya , so I looked for how to pronounce IKEA and founded you 😁👍🏻 good to know that I wasn’t wrong
says [ikea] or [ikeya]. btw, we say 屋[ya] in the end of the words and it means “shop” in japanese. so, many people might be mixed up them.
Dude I always pronounce it “Ikea”, didn’t know it should be “Ikea”, thanks!
As an Englishman, when you see a new word that you've never heard, you pronounce it in a way that makes sense in English. Since "Ikea" is very similar to "idea", which is pronounced "eye dee uh", it's only natural that we pronounced it "eye kee uh". Once a name is out there and so well-known, it's very difficult to then change the pronunciation. There are many other examples of this - Volkswagen which in German is pronounced "Folks-vargun" but in English is "Volks-wagon". English adverts for Volkswagen pronounce it the English way. I'm sure there are British and American brands which are mispronounced in other countries so it's not really a big deal.
Yeah but igloo
How ignorant are you? V in German is pronounced like an F. Volk means folk in German, so ignoring the F sound in the German V is a mistake! It would be like ignoring the H sound in the Spanish J.
When I talk in English I do pronounce IKEA the way most people do as you've said , but I'm in Italian and in Italy the pronunciation is very very close to the Swedish one.
I'm Spanish and we pronounce it the same way you guys do ♥️🙋🏻♀️
In Germany wie pronounce it like the swedish version because we speak the "I", "E","A" like the swedish people.
In spanish we pronounce the "E" and "I" like you. But that A man...how the scheiße you people make that sound, it baffles me.
That's same in Turkey too
In Poland it's pronounced similarly too.
in Greece as well
This is so interesting to me. Especially that the guy changes his pronunciation based on who he is talking to.
In Uruguay (where Spanish is spoken) we pronounce it like the Swedish way. But I think it's because if we tried to pronounce it in Spanish, it would sound the same as in Swedish. (Sorry if I make mistakes when writing, I'm not English speaker).
In Portugal we pronunce it like the Swedish way.
The Advertisement in Indonesia do it like the US but since we are not really good at english.. we pronounced it the way we see it in Indonesian which is similar to the Swedish Pronunciation.. and it turned out the people who doesnt follow the ad were saying is actually the closest to the actual pronunciation.. TA-DAH😆
my friend who isn't very good in english say it "aikia" like US did and made me shocked&feel ill bcs i never heard indonesian ads pronounce it like that.
Enggak sih, semua iklan di Indo ngomongny “IKEA” kayak org Swedia, ga inget tuh yg iklan “IKEA hidupkan rumah?”
I got an email from or about IKEA in Japan that wrote it "イケア" (ii-ke-ah) and it brought me here.
Dear Luke,
Its clear to me the you know very well how to use the little marks that tell us how to pronounce a letter. Could you please make a video or share some source that explains how to use them? If these were more commonly understood a lot of confusion in teaching would melt away. I'm loving your videos, and am teaching English and learning French.
Thank you sincerely,
Eric near Chicago, IL USA
You should look up the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet).
Hi Eric, I'll make one eventually, but you can take a look at my interactive vowel and consonant charts on my website to hear the sounds improveyouraccent.co.uk/vowel-chart/ and improveyouraccent.co.uk/consonant-chart/
This is interesting. Ikea is now in Chile and they are going with the Swedish way which is actually also how we would read the word.
0:24 as ur an accent specialist, i expected u to pronounce it more accurately in swedish. but i got to laugh anyways XD
thank you, sir!
I pronounce it the Swedish way, but that's probably 'cause I'm born and raised in Norway.
OMG have you made a video about IKEA.. #ProudSwede
Love your accent doe!
Pls make more video about swedish accented english. I want to improve my english so it doesn't sound as much swedish :))
Wonderful
I do the same as the CEO of IKEA. I pronounce it the Swedish way in when I speak Norwegian or the English way when speaking English.
I Love IKEA So Much It Is Very Nice
it's so interesting!
This is interesting. I was thinking that every country in this world pronounce it English way till I watched this video. Japan also pronounce it swedish way as well.
I'll start pronouncing it the Swedish way. 😊 Thanks!
As a Swede this was very interesting ^^
I really had an arguement wt ma cousin fr ds pronunciation. Tx fr clarifying ma doubt.
Ha! Can’t wait to send this link to a friend who recently corrected my pronunciation of IKEA when I said it in what turns out to be the Swedish way. I argued that it’s a Swedish store, so we should try to pronounce it the way they probably do in Sweden. Hey, I had no proof yet that they pronounced it that way, but my reasoning was this: in many countries, other than, say, the US or England, a written I is often pronounced like the long E in English words (like the long E that is the first letter of Sweden). Whereas a written E is usually pronounced like the long A in “hay.” That leaves us with the final A of IKEA, which, when written, is generally pronounced like a soft A, as in “Ah!”
Numerous comments below from people all around the world attest to this tendency.
However, a commenter below-no doubt American-argues that if, for example, we’re speaking English and use a Spanish word in a sentence, it would sound “weird” to pronounce that Spanish word correctly for a few seconds. I’m American, and I find that argument a particularly American one. I’ve traveled all over the world and have observed that often Americans have the worst accents when speaking other languages (if they even try). Possibly this betrays arrogance.
Pronouncing IKEA the Swedish way, since it’s a Swedish company, is probably somewhat unimportant in the grand scheme of things. But shouldn’t we have the humility to respect other languages by at least making the attempt to pronounce them correctly??
And by the way, most Spanish speaking Americans I’ve met pronounce English words the American way, but they do pronounce Spanish words the Spanish way-even if it’s only for a few seconds. It sounds cool!
I would love a video about how to pronounce different brands. Like Adidas, Nike, Levi's etc. Me and my friends have had a huge debate about how to pronounce it.
Adidas is a german company, they pronounce it as we do in France: A-DEE-DAS with both A like the one from ikeA.
In Malaysia, the ads are like the Swedish pronunciation. I say "ee-kay-ah". But I've heard locals used both the British and Swedish pronunciations. Then there's the Malaysian way which is "ee-kia" with hard "k" 😁
In South Korea, we pronounce it like EE-KAY-AH.
Ko-ray-ah Ee-Kay- ah.
And Russians too
Love how the CEO is pronouncing IKEA with a huge accent when saying it in Swedish.
Yeah he's got a distinct accent in Swedish LOL
Not just Swedish, kind of every language other than Englih. Just in English i turned into ay, and e into i, compared to the original sound in the latin alphabet
In Portugal it's pronounced similarly to the swedish version, but with an "e" sound (like in "swEdish") sound after the E letter. So, something like "ikeia"
There was an audio voice over ad in the store today which said 'Welcome to EYE-kea' and this surprised me because I would have expected the correct I-kea but this was not so
In Italy we pronounce it like the Swedes, not because we speak Swedish, but simply because it comes natural to us :)
In Italy we also pronounce it like the Swedish IKEA (ichea) with strong ch
Your adjö was pretty good
The Swedish CEO seems to have a pretty pronounced Scanian accent, so not typically Swedish.
What are the features of a Scanian accent?
Guttural Rs like in french as opposed to rolled Rs like Spanish, and many vowels sounds are turned into diphtongs.
The majority of Swedes would say Eeh-keh-ah, whereas it sounds like he is saying it in the typical Scanian way, Eeh-kay-ah. There are some minor different dialects within Scania though.
yeah in many ways scanian sounds more like danish than swedish.
It sounds like he is from Skåne
Det är precis vad jag sa? Skåne heter Scania på Engelska
In Poland we pronounce it the Polish way which sounds pretty much identical to the original Swedish pronunciation.
Same with Russian pronunciation :) surprisingly
In Turkey we pronounce it as the Brit-swedish version as well.
In Poland we pronunce it like that /ikɛa/
tak
So ... in Spain we pronounce IKEA correctly. Hahahaha. Great video.
On the contrary , British are less ignorant and more open to other cultures ! In the U.S , they are very self-centered and unilingual , they certainly would get the swedish prononciation ! Same as 'Tefal' un the states it is 'T-fal'!
christo fat thanks for stereotyping
SuperOkfine Welcome ,there are also some truths in stereotypes!
You can't blame Americans for mispronouncing companies' names, when said companies make commercials in the US pronouncing the name wrong. It is what it is.
Also learning a second language over here is not as useful considering we are fairly isolated, geographically speaking. So while many of us do learn a second language, we never have a reason to use it, and eventually lose most of it. I think a lot of people forget that the US is almost as large as all of Europe combined. Coast to coast, we speak almost entirely English whereas in the same area in Europe you come across dozens of languages in countries that you have easy and cheap access to.
Are we all ignorant, self-centered twats who aren't opened to other cultures? Of course not. And if you weren't so ignorant and self-centered maybe you would realize that.
I feel sorry for you
@@zainabsalah I feel sorry for you
I have seen this before: some time ago I contacted the founder of a French software house, specifically to ask how it was pronounced, and his reply was one way for France and a different way for America.
In THAILAND, we use the Swedish pronunciation e-kia (อิเกีย)☺
I knew it! I use the Swedish pronunciation.
"Say ikea if you wanna show up your swedish knowledge"
Me whos apparently always been pronouncing it right because my native language isnt english:
👁👄👁
I’m from the US and lately been watching U.K. television that happened to air an IKEA commercial that pronounced it differently from that of the US TV commercial, just like in this video. Then it hit me that both were wrong. I now live in Hawai’i; the Hawaiian language or ‘Ōlelo Hawai’i would also, if read as Hawaiian word would sound like the proper Swedish enunciation. Also the word “kea” is common in ‘Ōlelo may be root word, prefix or suffix. Hawaii doesn’t have an IKEA, we need them here!
I would do my best to remember & pronounce it the Swedish way and respect the way founder intended it to be...
In Spain we pronounce it like /ee-keh-ah/. It would be fun if you made a video of how British pronounce PAELLA? :p
In Taiwan, virtually everyone uses the Swedish way of saying IKEA. But most people can still understand the English pronunciation of IKEA.
so swedish quitely using latin sounds, in indonesia ikea tvc pronounce it as swedish way
soalnya kita bekas jajahan belanda, which means close to germanic language, swedish jg termasuk germanic
In Russia, we pronounce it like EE-CAY-AH.
And also NIKE similar to the word "bike" (=naik). So they have officially adopted the Russian pronunciation variant when writing the company"s name in the Russian alphabet, like in bills etc. Otherwise, nobody would understand the brand's name.
Same
IKEA as a swedish roots! 👍🏻 from Italy
lol. Good stuff. I was wondering what the original pronunciation was.
I say "ee keh ah" in Swedish and "ai kee uh" when I speak english. I think it's normal. I mean do you use a French accent every time you say croissant?
But then again if I heard an anglophone pronounce Ikea the Swedish way, I think I'd be impressed.
In fact, adjö come from the french "adieu" (as lot of suedish words), but with suedish accent, they do not pronounce the 'd' sound. For a french that sounds like "a-ieu".
And for Ikea, yes most french people pronounce it Ikéa. But it is to be pronouced (in french) I-Ké-a (with a long 'é'), almost like a french I-ké-ya. French people can heard the avertissement where they focus on the good prononciation (but french people think it is a singing thing and not the correct pronociation).
czcams.com/video/HiFv1JCXUoU/video.html
i’ve always said “ekea” i know it’s an I but i grew up in germany and all the add and people pronounced it as E. moving to the states everyone always looked at me funny when i would say Ikea with an E as the first letter!! but i showed them this video and now they all say E
Muito bom.
In Singapore they seem to say EEE KEE AH A mixture of both options, or the best of both worlds?
I was just watching RachelAndJun's comments on how they (a westerner and native Japanese, residents in JP) choose to say Ikea. Apparently the JP approximation is significantly similar but not identical to Swedish, while the US pronunciation I had always used is garbage 😀
I'm from Hong Kong, I speak English with RP accent, but I usually pronounce IKEA in the Swedish way.
What is interesting to me is with so many English words like inside, interest, input etc. nobody ever changed the pronunciation from "ee" to "ai", but somebody thought when pronouncing Ikea, they should go with "ai" rather than "ee"
Please, would you make a video about how native English speakers pronounce the different kinds of cheese? For example, the English pronunciation of "Gouda" is really weird.
In the Netherlands we also pronounce it the Swedish way
Thanks
In Hungary, we pronounce it the original way and I never understood why is it so hard for many native english speakers to do so.
I think it's just laziness.
It's not even a "tricky" word.
I agree with you. Look what a mess they did with the Greek word 'nike'.
"Adjö" exists in textbooks. But Swedish people normally use "hej då".
"Adjö" is more dramatic, and more final, than "hej då"
I don't know much - after all I am just a Swedish leraner and not native speaker - but I have a lot of Swedish friends and I only heard adjö being used in a melodramatic and kind of ironic way. And usually we just say hej då or hej hej to say good by. (And maybes sentences like Har det så bra or so....)
I guess that's correct?
ElisabethOrchard
Yes. I am swedish, and that is correct.
Tbh only one who says "Adjö" are the Swedish teachers in school.
Lovely *
Well this youtuber was a teacher in the video..