>>>>>>> Next task. Learn to pronounce Gruziya (that's how Georgia calls itself, I presume), and Tbilisi (note that the impossible initial TB is not impossible when a whole nation can pronounce it). Find Gruzian web radio or whatever to hear the sound.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Because it is not pronounced tb... it is pronounced ti or tə...
>>>>
>>>>That's anglophonised... from what I heard, there's no schwa between t and b. You can't expect Merriam-Webster to print something that 99.9% of the users are incapable of pronouncing. There was a famous song (in Russian, though) in the sixties, titled after the city, and... BTW, do you pronounce "potbelly" or "potabelly"?
>>>
>>>I didn't hear any schwa and it's not in the pronounciation... where is it?
>>
>>So if it's not there between "t" and "b" in "potbelly", why must it be there in "TBilisi"? Because it's at the beginning of a word?
>
>I still do not hear any 'schwa' in either of the wav files of it being pronounced (not even between the 't' and 'b') nor do i see it in the written pronounciation on the site I posted. Not sure where you are getting that?

Pronunciation: \tə-ˈbē-lə-sē, tə-bə-ˈlē-sē\

What's that character after t? Looks like a schwa to me. And it counts tə- as a syllable.

My apologies to everybody here for taking this into a direction which doesn't have much to do with anything relevant. I only wanted to give Grady a little poke in the rib for joining the general game of giving advice and knowing exactly what should be done about countries we can't even spell - or, in case of Gruzia, don't even know their proper names. My knowledge on the matter is maybe a millimeter or so more advanced - I've seen a few Gruzian movies (in Russian dub, save the singing - which was a real discovery), met a few Gruzins (at least that's how we call them) in their natural state (i.e. in the USSR, not as political refugees with whom you never know when do they think they need to pour hatred over their old country for the microphones), and my dad once visited Tbilisi and brought pictures and commented on what he saw.

Other than that... I'd rather be interested to see how can Saakashvili be the teacher's pet, when they still have Stalin's square and Stalin's statues over there? When he's handling his opposition not much better than Mugabe is? Just because he's the keeper of the pipeline?