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The pronunciations given in the BtN entry (with the initial a the same as in "at") would seem to be correct. These are certainly the pronunciations I'm familiar with. In these versions the stress is on the first two a-s, but only the second may be long (when pronounced AH). Your proposals are plausible, but not what is meant to be indicated by BtN. First, ahr-ee-AHN-ə, without initial umlaut under the influence of the second stressed AH; second EHR-ee-AHN-ə or EHR-ee-an-ə by further umlaut causing raising of the /æ/ to /e/ (this is what we call leveling, as the /e/ is closer in position to the long /i/ indicted by BtN's "ee", but it also results from a tendency of English speakers to sometimes assume "ar" is pronounced EHR [as in Aaron] rather than AHR when the A is long). Further leveling may even result in some people saying it EHR-ee-en-ə, particularly in dialects where unstressed vowels are raised and fronted to /e/ or the majority of vowels are nasalized. Since we're not asking what is the correct pronunciation in Attic Greek, or highland Gaelic, the issue is not what is the correct pronunciation, but whether the BtN entry reflects a common pronunciation among English speakers. Given the wide range of English dialects it may be impossible to include every one you'll hear, and it wouldn't be accurate to describe any subgroup as "correct".

This message was edited 11/24/2019, 7:58 PM