Posted on 05/15/2008 3:39:13 PM PDT by forkinsocket
In the delicate world of diplomatic protocol, mispronouncing a foreign leader's name ranks among the worst of faux pas. But that is lost on many Americans. Who can forget Hillary Rodham Clinton's verbal gymnastics after being asked by Tim Russert to name the new president of Russia? (Most transcripts cleaned it up as "Medvedev -- whatever.") Or recall the guffawing last September after a draft of President Bush's speech before the United Nations was found that included the phonetic spellings of several names of foreign countries and leaders. Among them: Harare (hah-RAR-ray) and Mugabe (moo-GAH-bee).
At a time when the United States is trying to improve its image abroad, mangling the names of foreign dignitaries does not help. Nowhere is this issue more sensitive than at the United Nations, where diplomats view the mispronunciation of names as a subtle if passive-aggressive form of U.N. bashing. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the Egyptian former secretary-general whose name launched a thousand jokes ("The man so nice they named him twice," David Letterman liked to quip), wrote in his memoir that he resented former Sen. Bob Dole's "mocking pronunciation of my name -- Boo-trus, Boo-trus --" during the 1996 presidential campaign. It "sounded like a jeering crowd," he wrote.
Former Secretary-General Kofi Annan's name also was often mispronounced. He told NPR that his surname rhymed with "cannon," but that did not stop most people from pronouncing it "uh-non." As a U.N. specialist told me, "[It's] pronounced with an accent on the first syllable, even though people think that's an American way of screwing up the pronunciation, which they assume is French-like."
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
I agree that you should always attempt to pronounce peoples’ names correctly. That is always the polite thing to do.
Frankly, I don’t really care if we hurt the feelings of a bunch of blue-beret wearing socialists, tyrants and criminals at the UN.
If the country they represent is not a society that allows basic freedoms such as religion, press, speech, elections etc, I don’t think they deserve a vote at the UN. Provide freedom and a vote to your citizens, earn your vote in New York.
— Sorry, just a little UN rant on a Thursday afternoon.
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