Many non-native speakers pronounce 'azure' like 'Asia' or like 'essure' when naming Microsoft's product Azure - wrong pronunciation or am I mistaken? [duplicate]

I live in Austria and I am a student in computer science and there is a specific thing that drives me bonkers:

Every time when a person in my vicinity or I am conversing with is mentioning the product "Microsoft Azure", they pronounce the word Azure /ˈeɪʒə/ (like Asia) or /ˈeʃə/ (like pressure without the initial pr).

What is so odd is that not only users of this product or students pronounce it that way, but also representatives from MS who promote this product. So far the representatives I have met have all been non-native English speakers, though.

Sometimes I have corrected the person in such a conversation and telling them it is pronounced /ˈazjʊə/ (like sure with an a the beginning and replacing the s with a zh sound. It is pronounced that way on Leo.org, a commonly used online dictionary.

The primary proof I bring forward however in such a case is the song Rule, Britannia!, in which the word azure is pronounced /azjʊə/ like I mentioned.

My question is: Am I right that everyone who pronounces the name Azure like Asia or essure pronounces it incorrectly, or have I missed anything when learning the English language and I am just plain stupid? Or does the Microsoft product have a different pronunciation to the regular word azure?

Solution 1:

Let's agree on a few notations:

/s/ - regular "s" sound. the same sound in "The united states"
/z/ - regular "z" sound. the same sound in "Zebra"
/ʒ/ - "french J" sound, the same sound as in "vision"
/ʃ/ - the same sound as in "shame" and "shallow"

At least for American English , Merriam-Webster, Macmillan and Wiktionary (which shouldn't be disregarded!) all agree that "azure" should be pronounced with the /ʒ/ sound ("french j).

for British English, dictionaries vary, but it seems that the British pronunciation has the /z/ or /ʒ/ sounds, but never the /s/ or /ʃ/ sounds.