A helpful tip

The inimitable Daniel Davies:

Mahmoud Ahamdinejad’s name is fucking difficult to spell. It’s also difficult to pronounce. This forms the basis for my latest raft of pronouncements on international affairs.

It is based on the Davies BBC Pronunciation Department Theory Of Geopolitics, which basically states that the importance of any foreigner to the politics of the UK can be reasonably assessed by looking at how much trouble the newsreaders take to get his name right. In general, the BBC appears to believe that all foreigners are pissy little no-marks and you pronounce their names phonetically as if they were English words.

I’d say the theory holds for the U.S., too.

Viz, the pronunciation of Ahmadinejad’s name (which is actually much easier to spell than Khruschev’s if you remember that it is actually a double-barrelled name – Ahmadi-Nejad – the Guardian actually used to spell it this way for a short while but seems to have given up). This is basically pronounced as “I’m a dinner jacket”.

Go see what he has to say about the rest of the world’s leaders.

posted by Sra. Bibliotecaria ⋅ tagged international, language, politics

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