Is it sad that Bush can't even pronounce Mosul correctly?

[Ravenseye]

There were a few things that bugged me about the speech last night.

(ya think?)

Sure there was the whole lying, twisting, and distorting of facts. They hate our freedom. That kind of bull. The thing that stuck in my craw, probably because I was expecting the rest of the BS, was that he pronounced Mosul incorrectly. He said it more like Moe-zul when it's pronounced more like Moo-sl.

It's something that's bugged me since early on in the war. Embedded reporters said it wrong. Anchors said it wrong, often in different ways. Occasionally one would even say it right, but I don't know if that was because they knew the correct pronunciation, or whether with a hundred reporters saying it wrong, one or two would hit on saying it right just by sure chance.

I even talked about it with my family. My father, who was born in Mosul, and I had a good sort of derisive laugh about it. It pissed us both off, particularly because...well it's not like it's hard to pronounce. It's not got one of those arabic sounds that English doesn't have, like the one that continually screwed up the pronunciation and spelling of Kadafi, Khadafi, Qadafi, etc. No, Mosul is pronounced very normally to the American English ear.

Well fine. If a reporter is two weeks in country, facing car bombs, wearing an armored vest for the first time in her life, and she's scared shitless to stand on the street, i'm not surprised nobody has told her how to pronounce the place correctly. She's not standing around talking to people on the street, she's bolting for the green zone so she can stay there for her rotation.

But the President? This isn't asking him to name the prime minister of Kyrgystan four months before his initial election. This is the third largest city in Iraq, the nation he has occupied for the past two and a half years. Shouldn't he say the name correctly? It'd be like someone can say New York, and Los Angeles perfectly fine, but when it comes to Chicago they say Chai-say-go. It'd make you think the guy has no clue about the country at all, doesn't it?

End of Rant.

[bryant69]

1. Damn. I've been mispronouncing it as well.

Now i'm going to go lay down and have a good cry.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[Ravenseye]

2. Well you've probably never heard it correctly pronounced

I just have no idea why so much of the American media pronounces it completely wrong.

Kind of like when they pronounce Saddam Hussein like Soddom. Make some kind of evil biblical connection. Sa- Dahm. the emphasis is on the second sylable. STuff like that that the BBC pronounces perfectly correct usually, where the american media, particularly Fox News, shock, does wrong.

I just don't get it.

[lectrobyte]

3. * probably pronounces it wrong on purpose, he doesn't want to

seem like one of them "book-learnt" Washington DC types, he's a down home cowboy common-man shit-kicker from Texas with at least one of his faces...

[wtmusic]

4. Characteristic of American ethnocentricity

unbridled power tends to do that to people.

[oblivious]

5. I often wonder about that too. How difficult is it to pronounce it right?

It seems terribly ignorant if it's your job to talk about the places.

And you're right about the BBC. They always take care to get names right no matter how difficult. They really impress me with some 15 syllable names they get from some parts of the world. My tongue gets tied up in knots even with "Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo" if I try it fast. But they spin it off at high speed.

[CitrusLib]

6. But is it Eye-wrack or Ear-ock?

Inquiring minds want to know.

:)

[Ravenseye]

9. Honestly it's neither :)

The correct pronunciation of Iraq includes sounds not in English.

Basically it's kind of like this, humor me and my ability to put it in type.

Eh (like the middle vowel in the word Fez)

R

aww (it's a very aw sound like.. "oh look at the baby, aw")

q (this is the tough one. it's not a k sound, more like saying CAW like a crow would say, in the back of the throat. When you say a K, think about where your tounge is in your mouth. it sort of touches the top middle of the mouth. Now say that letter but move your tounge back so it's touching in the BACK of the mouth and you've got it.)

Eh-R-Aww-Q

Best I can do in this format.

[Patiod]

7. I love the CNN commercial with Christiane Amanpour

trying to teach the newer anchor not to say Eye-rack and Eye-ran.

Now they'll need one on Mosul...

[Gyre]

8. "nookular" says it all.

The man is a bona fide moron. Intellectually less than large, but unfortunately in charge. Sucks to be American these days unless all you're concerned about is survival.

Gyre

[Rob H.]

10. It's like his pronunciation of "Abu Ghraib"

There was a speech he gave (SotU? I don't remember) in the wake of the pictures of prisoner abuse becoming public where he pronounced it three different ways in the same speech--"Ah-boo Gah-reff", "Ah-Boo Graybe", and "Ah-Boo Grebb." Considering how it had been all over the news for at least a week prior to the speech, you'd think one of his handlers would've told him the proper pronunciation. Hell, if he'd been discussing it privately at all he would've learned the proper way to say it.

Truthfully, though, I think he didn't learn how to pronounce it because he just doesn't give a shit about such things and has zero intellectual curiosity about things that don't affect him directly--after all, the torture and prisoner abuse was happening to "them," not "us."

[riverwalker]

11. Mooolas in MoeZule, Eye-Rack

Abo Gireb, Abu Gareg. The idiots intentionally mispronounce certain words. Rumsfeld always says Ben Lay-Den