why is tanzania pronounced as it is?

[glenis]

why is tanzania pronounced tan-zan-eer and not tan-zan-eea or even tan-zain-eea ? romania is pronounced row-main-eea not row-man-eea. why the difference?

[Aschenbach]

When Zanzibar and Tanganyika united in 1964, the new country was named Tanzania.

Romania, Russia, Bulgaria and other slavonic langauges traditionally use feminine words for countries ending in -ya  (England - Angliya, France - Frantsiya) with the stress on the penultimate syllable. The English language words for Russia etc does not reflect this yet, ironically,  should sound like Tanzania is spoken.

Similarly, Arkansas and Kansas sound different and they're in the same country but this is because the French pronunciation of Arkansas stuck.

[graemer]

It is pronounced Tan-zan-eea, according to the Merriam-webster Online. Click here and type in Tanzania and click on the audio pronounciation and that's what you hear.

[Kazav]

Romania though is pronounced with the stress on the final syllable by the Romanians. The Romanian language is not a Slavic language, as someone has said here. It is a Romance language with its origins in Latin and is the only country in that area with a language like this.