How to pronounce "Aiiieee"?

Hi,everyone.
In 1974, three Asian American scholars Jeffrey Paul Chan , Frank Chin , and Lawson Fusao Inada co-compiled an anthology of Asian American literature entitled Aiiieeeee!: An Anthology of Asian American Writers . Would you please tell me how to pronounce "Aiiieeeee"?
Thanks.
Richard

 

You'd probably need a Japanese or Chinese speaker to answer this.

If there's an audio book of this, you could listen to an excerpt and see if they say the title of it.

Or you could google it and see if there's a review of it in which an audio has been posted or if it was discussed on a tv show or something that you could listen to.

 

Thanks. I will follow your advice. Tomorrow I will attend a conference on Asian American literature where I am expected to deliver a speech on another Asian American writer Gish Jen. I wanna make sure of everything if possible.
Thanks again.
Richard

 

My guess is:

The "a" sounds like the "a" in "haha."

The "ie" sounds like the "ie" in "relieve"... but longer.

Good luck on pronouncing an Asian expression the American way, though.

 

Aiii = like 'I' as in 'You may not, but I do'.
eeeee = like the 'e' in 'me'

Aiiieeeee is used instead of 'words' like 'ow!' / 'ouch!' to express pain or surprise, but it's also a common exclamation a bit like 'Oh, wow!'

Hope this helps, I live in Turkey now and 'Aiiieeeee' is used here as in many Middle Eastern and some Asian countries. I'm sure there are slight local variations in use and pronunciation, though.

You could try listening to some Hindi or Turkish pop music of course, if that's available to you (maybe on youtube?) They say 'Aiiieeeee!' like a kind of 'hey! hey!' or 'yeah! yeah' on the beat of the music sometimes.

 

Listen to "My Same" by Adele.
My guess is something similar to her first words...haha

 

i would pronounce it as a drawn-out 'eye-ee'

 

Thank you all for your help. I will head for the conference soon.
Thanks for helping me out.
Richard

 

I'd pronounce it the same way as Mammamaia.

But if we're going on Asian pronunciations, or at least I'm thinking from the perspective of Japanese - I believe normally each different vowel is pronounced, though 'I' and 'E' in English would work like it does in 'relieve', but in Japanese, 'I' and 'E' together like in the word 'Iie', which mean 'no', which I think is pronounced as 'ee-eh' - though I doubt that's how this word is meant to be pronounced - "Ah-eee-ehhhhh".

My money's on 'eye-ee'. Not real money of course.

 

You clearly don't watch enough old Godzilla movies. It's the sound Tokeans make right before they're stepped on by a guy in a rubber suit.

 

Thanks for giving me clues as to how to pronounce "Aiiieeeee". At the conference on Chinese American literature I heard many Chinese scholars, who attend international conferences overseas very often, pronounce it as "ah- e". To my knowledge, in Chinese "Aiiieeeee" is a deep sigh when the person who heaves it feels that he has no choice but to accept the fact.

 

In Gaelic it would be pronounced A. But of the languages in that region the only one Gaelic is related to is Hindi, and I doubt that the book mentions many Hindi writers.

Another useless post from me, then

 

"Eye-eeee"

Though the "Eeee-yah" exclamatory is more popular in "J-culture" - it roughly equates to "no!"