Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
ThinkProgress collects the complaints from the right about Obama correctly pronouncing Pakistan during the 2nd debate. I especially like this email sent to the terminally ridiculous Kathryn Lopez at the National Review. The emailer labels it a "liberal elite moment":
When Obama says Pock-i-stahn I have an uncontrollable urge to read the New Yorker and find some Chardonnay.Fortunately I have an old copy of NR and a Coors Light to snap me back to reality.
Seriously though -- no one in flyover country says Pock-i-stahn. It's annoying.
Lopez, to no one's surprise, labels her post about it:
Running for President of Europe?
Because, you see, pronouncing words correctly is an example of liberal elitism -- or worse, of European Continentalism, which is a right wing code word for "cheese eating surrender monkeys." Seriously, is there no limit to just how absurd the pedestrian right can be? For god's sake, Lopez writes for a magazine founded by William F. Buckley. You'd think that fact alone would prevent the National Review minions from making lame attacks on what they perceive as effete intellectualism.
Not to be outdone, her colleague Ramesh Ponnuru gets in on the act:
A shot every time the candidates pronounce "Pakistan" or "Taliban" in an annoying way?
And by "annoying," of course, he means "correctly." Perhaps he could drink a shot every time Palin says "nukular." Or every time McCain pronounces Ahmadinejad three different ways in 5 seconds, as he did in the first debate. For that matter, perhaps Lopez and Ponnuru should be casting aspersions on Gen. Petraeus, who pronounces Pakistan the same way Obama does:
Politics
Comments
My friends and I swooned with glee when Obama pronounced Pakistan correctly! All those short As in Iran and Iraq and Pakistan have been getting on our nerves for *years*.
Oh wait...we're part of the liberal elite. Never mind. ::eyeroll::
Posted by: Mara | October 9, 2008 9:31 AM
Andrew Schlafly at Conservapedia is pushing the idea that Obama's pronunciation of Pakistan indicates that Barack is actually a stealth Muslim.
One supposes that calling the Chinese capital "Beijing" instead of "Peking" indicates the speaker is a closet communist.
Posted by: Argon | October 9, 2008 9:43 AM
Well, it was the Red Chinese who gave us Pinyin to replace Wade-Giles.
Posted by: Flying Fox | October 9, 2008 9:47 AM
They should also be casting aspersions on Phyllis Schlafly, who went to an all-French finishing school.
Posted by: Kristine | October 9, 2008 10:07 AM
Geez, and all this time I've been saying "PA-kis-tan'". Who knew I was wingnut redneck? Not me, anyways (although you'd think my wife might be kind enough to break it to me).
Is this really the best the Right can do? Micro-analyzing the pronunciation and mannerisms of their opponent? Are they really that desperate?
Posted by: Eamon Knight | October 9, 2008 10:07 AM
I'm surprised those guys ever heard of Pakistan. I'd have thought they believe it to be some smalltown in Alaska.
Posted by: Christophe Thill | October 9, 2008 10:19 AM
Yes, they are.
Posted by: Penn | October 9, 2008 10:19 AM
and of course next week, they will be complaining about the government's failures in the teaching quality of English classes.
The best thing an intelligent person can do in America is to act dumb.
Posted by: Richard Eis | October 9, 2008 10:24 AM
No, remember; criticism of the military: real, imagined, fabricated, or otherwise is....TREASON!
Posted by: stevogvsu | October 9, 2008 10:34 AM
Boy and it must really get their goat to hear a "nuclear Pakistan" pronounced correctly!
Of course I lived in Minnesota for four years-so I now say "goat" with a very long O.
And I'm damn proud to be an "elitist" because I cringe every time I hear the town of Versailles in Indiana pronounced VerSAYuhls.
Posted by: Rev. AJB | October 9, 2008 10:40 AM
There may be the "correct" way of pronouncing a name but that ignores regional differences and dialects. I've heard people from Pakistan (having worked for a company based there) pronounce it both ways. I have little patience for people who get hung up over those issues.
(years ago I was in a room with two 40 year computer industry veterans arguing for 30 minutes over how "SQL" is pronounce - saying each letter individually "S.Q.L" or phonetically "sequel" - the guy who sat on the committee that set the standard won - he said it didn't frak'n matter)
Posted by: yoshi | October 9, 2008 10:58 AM
Arguments over pronunciation of foreign names are stupid. You have people earnestly say we pronounce Niger as nee-jer instead of nai-ger, but have no problem with saying Greece, Spain, and Italy instead of Ellas, Ethpania, and Italia.
So, Mara who swooned at the "correct" pronunciation of Pakistan, and Rev. AJB who cringed at the "mispronunciation" of Versailles, Indiana; how do you pronounce Switzerland, Germany, Sweden, and Mexico?
Posted by: delurking | October 9, 2008 11:10 AM
Well complaining about it in the first place is fucking stupid, and the article cited in this post is pathetic.
But then, anyone who is speaking English and pronounces Paris as Paree is going to sound like a right dickhead. And rightly so. Even the fucking French pronounce the 's' when they are speaking English.
Posted by: Matthew | October 9, 2008 11:19 AM
I'm not about to search for it, but I believe Ann Coulter has made that charge more than once.
Posted by: Pieter B | October 9, 2008 11:19 AM
I recall the SNL sketch where a newsroom staff were trying to out-Spanish each other pronouncing Spanish words, and in walks Bob Costas, which they then spent two minutes over-pronouncing as "Coh-stas".
Also I enjoy listening to BBC announcers say "Nick-a-rag-you-a".
But I'm funny that way.
Posted by: Johnny Vector | October 9, 2008 11:23 AM
This reminds me, tangentially, of times when people have asked me how to spell words which are basically slang. I generally tell them that given the word doesn't exist in the first place, at least not in any official sense, they should just go for it and let their imagination run wild.
Posted by: Matthew | October 9, 2008 11:23 AM
Yup... competence is elitist.
(Note: this was originally sarcastic, but then I realized how true it actually is. It's in the vein of "half of everyone is below median intelligence".)
This, of course, raises the question: How exactly do we get people to want their leaders to be smarter than they are?
Posted by: chancelikely | October 9, 2008 11:26 AM
If you listen to the unlamented Musharraf in this clip you'll hear him refer to "Pohkiston". However, at 40 seconds, you'll also hear him talk about "all we have achieved in the pohst seven years". The problem is more a matter of accent as of 'correct' pronunciation.
Most (for all I know, maybe all) American accents tend to pronounce the long 'a' vowel with an inflected 'e'. When pronouncing foreign words, I've noticed that Americans often over-compensate and end up pronouncing the long 'a' as 'oh' rather than 'ah'. F'rinstance, we supercilious Yurpeenz laugh at Murkins who refer to the war in "IrOck". (Germans overcompensate in the other way and talk about buying 'hemburgers in MecDonalds).
We Irish do not make mistakes in pronunciation, though we are pleased to help our language-challenged cousins abroad with theirs.
Posted by: Amadán | October 9, 2008 11:34 AM
...brought to you by the same people who think spelling and grammar are exercises in creativity.
Posted by: arin | October 9, 2008 11:38 AM
My son who is now 13 had some speech difficulties whem he was young. I spent a lot of time with him and his teachers so he could pronounce words correctly. A few years ago we moved to Tennessee. You would not believe how many people asked me why my son had a British accent when we got here, all because of the poroper pronunciation of vowels. I guess I am elitist.
Posted by: Mr P | October 9, 2008 11:39 AM
delurking: There's a big difference between pronouncing something the correct way when it is transliterated into your our language and insisting that every word and proper name be pronounced correctly as it is in the language from which it originates. Attacking people as hypocrites because they don't call Germany Deutscheland when speaking English is about as silly as insisting that the only way to pronounce it properly is with a Prussian accent as opposed to a Bavarian or an Alsatian one.
Having said that, ignoring the fact that nuk-u-lar is the product of a common enough transformation expressed in dozens of other English words in both the Scottish and numerous Southern dialects, just so we can mock people as uneducated, is also fairly ridiculous.
Posted by: Julian | October 9, 2008 11:41 AM
@ Rev AJB: And I'm damn proud to be an "elitist" because I cringe every time I hear the town of Versailles in Indiana pronounced VerSAYuhls.
Me, too.
But that's the correct way to pronounce name of the town, unfortunately.
We are not the first generation plagued with these tendencies.
Posted by: Longstreet63 | October 9, 2008 11:42 AM
Seriously? Such as...?
Posted by: Matthew | October 9, 2008 11:54 AM
If nuclear is pronounced nuk-u-lar, how is nucleus pronounced? nuk-u-lus?
Posted by: Patricia | October 9, 2008 12:36 PM
The Spanish word for "orange'" both the color and the fruit, is naranja, so the proper pronunciation of the fruit should be "a norange" rather than "an orange."
Posted by: Pieter B | October 9, 2008 12:44 PM
Rev. AJB - as a native Hoosier myself, I sympathize...but you left out a few. Such as Russiaville (ROO-sha-vil) - and Dubois (Doo-BOYS) County. Not to mention our neighbors to the south in LOO-uh-vul.
Now that I've moved to Georgia, the problem is worse. We have Martinez (MAR-tihn-ez), Berlin (BER-lin), and Omega (o-MEE-ga) - and those are just the ones I've found in less than a year.
After my assignment to Italy a few years ago, I occasionally tried to tell people about living in Napoli and visiting Roma...but after too many strange uncomprehending looks, I finally switched back to "Naples" and "Rome". I don't understand why we get carte blanche to rename places to suit us, though. Can we do the same with people? Shall we start calling the Republican nominees Ma-KAN and PAL-in, all with short a sounds?
Posted by: BobApril | October 9, 2008 1:08 PM
I think it was Nobelist Murray Gell-Mann who had
the habit of pronouncing the names of cities in
other countries exactly the way their inhabitants
pronounced them. The result of this was that his
listeners sometimes had no idea which city he meant.
Posted by: conelrad | October 9, 2008 1:19 PM
Ha, I like heddle's comment. Funny but sadly true. I have to agree with another commenter, too, that these hypothetical exercises in "this is what would happen if it were the other side" are suspect and of very limited usefulness.
Posted by: Adrienne | October 9, 2008 1:22 PM
I guess Colbert stopped being a parody long time ago. Or at least since yesterday. Now it's just a VERY funny reflection.
Posted by: MarkusR | October 9, 2008 1:24 PM
and how do you pronounce
Houston?
Posted by: Kevin | October 9, 2008 1:25 PM
In Texas, it's HEW-sten. In Noo Yawk, it's HOW-ston. Unless you're talking about the Texas city rather than the Noo Yawk street.
Posted by: Pieter | October 9, 2008 1:29 PM
Ding we have a winner!
Posted by: Kevin | October 9, 2008 1:31 PM
I can understand disagreeing about whether to lengthen certain vowels, or whether to Anglicize the pronunciation of certain foreign works. But for Cthulhu's sake, the word "nuclear" is not spelled with a vowel between the "c" and the "l". Pronouncing the word as "nuculer" is just wrong (just like pronouncing "ask" as "ax" is wrong).
Posted by: Tulse | October 9, 2008 1:35 PM
Living in Ohio, I always chuckle when people can't pronounce all of the Indian names that we have 'round these parts (Scioto, Olentangy, Tuscarawas, Cuyahoga, Coshocton, Geauga, Muskingum, etc.). And yes, I have heard all of these words mispronounced at some point in my life.
Thing is, though, if you hadn't grown up in those areas, how would you know how the word was pronounced if you just saw it on paper? And that's even assuming that we're pronouncing them correctly from the Indian words.
And for all of you Hoosiers: you guys have Versailles, we have Bellefontaine (pronounced bell-FOWN-ten instead of bell-fawn-TEN).
The funniest thing is that the people who would get on Obama's case for "Pock-i-stahn" are the ones most likely to correct someone's pronunciation for one of the aforementioned names.
All kinds to make a world, I guess.
Posted by: MisterDomino | October 9, 2008 1:38 PM
Oh, goodie!!
Do "Cheese Eating Surrender Monkeys" get a patch to sew on our jackets? Do we fly? Wait is that the Porcine version I was thinking of?
anyway, Sign me up, I'm sure the clubhouse is nice, right?
cheers!
alcool
Posted by: alcoolworld | October 9, 2008 1:39 PM
Oh, goodie!!
Do "Cheese Eating Surrender Monkeys" get a patch to sew on our jackets? Do we fly? Wait is that the Porcine version I was thinking of?
anyway, Sign me up, I'm sure the clubhouse is nice, right?
cheers!
alcool
Posted by: alcoolworld | October 9, 2008 1:41 PM
Julian wrote:
"
delurking: There's a big difference between pronouncing something the correct way when it is transliterated into your our language and insisting that every word and proper name be pronounced correctly as it is in the language from which it originates."
I disagree that there is a difference. That is why I said in my first sentence that all of the arguments about "correct" pronunciation are stupid.
If you really believe what you just wrote, why Italy and not Italia? Why France (like the Americans say it) and not France (like the French say it)? Both are transliterations.
People seem to make a distinction between transliteration and translation that amounts to something like: if a foreign name is really hard to pronounce in English, then it is OK not to try to say it like the foreigners say it; however if the foreign name is only somewhat hard to pronounce in English, then one should try to pronounce it like the foreigners do (except for those European country names). But there is no good place to draw the line, so the argument is silly.
Posted by: delurking | October 9, 2008 1:45 PM
Give him a break, at least he doesn't say auf-HWAN-uh-stan.
Posted by: Shaden Freud | October 9, 2008 1:51 PM
Other than "nuclear", the one that REALLY annoys me is Favre.. as in Brett.
I live in Canada and a few years back it seemed like all the CBC news readers said "nucular"... there was a huge popular backlash and they now seem to have it under control.
Posted by: DonM | October 9, 2008 1:57 PM
@yoshi:
It doesn't matter that much now (and you probably know this anyway), but this marks one of the rare occasions when the IBM lawyers (aka the Nazgul) lost. IBM invented an SQL and called it Sequel - but it turned out that that was a Hawker-Siddeley trademark. IBM backed down and changed the name of the language; hence the ANSI-standard mandated pronunciation "es queue el".
Posted by: Robin Levett | October 9, 2008 2:11 PM
I grew up next to two southern cities that I've never heard anyone that didn't live there pronounce correctly.
Biloxi (Bill-ux-ee) and Gautier (Go-Shay).
It made for some interesting hurricane coverage, hearing how the cities of Billoocksee and Goiter sustained damage.
I grew up in Mississippi and lived in Alabama most of my life. I know how to pronounce nuclear and Pakistan correctly.
Bush and Palin don't pronounce nuclear correctly because they're drooling idiots that think education is useless and all books save one are evil.
It's the ignorance, not the accent.
Posted by: JThompson | October 9, 2008 2:16 PM
And Maine has Calais...pronounced CAL-us and not cal-AY as in the French way.
Posted by: Dave S. | October 9, 2008 2:24 PM
And don't forget old Virginny!
Buchanan County (buck-CAN-on) and Buena Vista (BU-na)
Posted by: NJ | October 9, 2008 2:40 PM
Of course there's "Warshington". It almost sets me off as much as "Nucular".
Posted by: James Taylor | October 9, 2008 2:49 PM
in texas, it may be "hewston", but if you're a native houstonian, it's "yewston"... just as nearby humble is "umble".
Posted by: yewstonian | October 9, 2008 3:06 PM
Yes, we do and it makes me cringe every time I hear Calais pronounced like that. There are still many native french speakers in Maine especially up near the Canadian border (my french sucks but my mom is a native speaker) and it drives them crazy.
Posted by: Noadi | October 9, 2008 3:23 PM
Oregon = ORYGUN
Posted by: Anna | October 9, 2008 3:34 PM
I got in trouble a few years back when teaching Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (no "the", by the way; that was added by the publisher. Talk about elitist!)
They'd gone round and round on me about the racism thing, and had been surprised when I made a convincing argument that the book wasn't racist, and offered them alternatives that were scary. When they couldn't impose their will on everyone, nearly all gave up, but one parent kept at me with numerous trivial complaints (while her kid, licensed by Mom to disrespect, did nothing and earned an F.)
Finally she swept in one afternoon and declared me incompetent for pronouncing the city at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers "CAY-ro" (and the state "ellenoy" and the state across the way "missourah".) Her reaction when I defended myself reminds me of the tone and logic of the posts at NRO.
ice
Posted by: ice9 | October 9, 2008 4:30 PM
BobApril, you must be from the northern part of the state. Louisville is most definitely pronounced Luh-vuh down south.
Posted by: Elli | October 9, 2008 4:36 PM
I have to add Worcester (Mass), which
the natives (some of them, anyway) style
as 'WIS-stahh'.
Posted by: conelrad | October 9, 2008 4:41 PM
Awfy lotta people here frae Houston! (pronounced Hughstin or Hewstin, at a guess, but a while since I've been there.) Houston, Renfrewshire of course, though I understand some settlements in the colonies have taken the same name..
Posted by: dave s | October 9, 2008 4:51 PM
Awfy lotta people here frae Houston! (pronounced Hughstin or Hewstin, at a guess, but a while since I've been there.) Houston, Renfrewshire of course, though I understand some settlements in the colonies have taken the same name..
Posted by: dave s | October 9, 2008 4:55 PM
As a Dane I get annoyed when English speakers pronounce the English name for our capital, Copenhagen, with a wrong o and an open a like in marvellous.
It makes it sound German, not Danish. Danes pronounce it with an o like in open, and and a like in hay, which is how I imagine would be the default way for many English speakers to pronounce it, if they weren't trying to make it sound authentic.
The Danish pronunciation is of course København.
Just like we don't don an English accent when we say "Amerikas Forenede Stater", which is the Danish name for USA.
Posted by: Soren | October 9, 2008 5:07 PM
There is a town south of Chicago that was founded by French missionaries and trappers. The name of the town is Bourbonnais but the natives say "bur-bone-iss".
Posted by: wrpd | October 9, 2008 5:39 PM
Locals are free to pronounce Bourbonnais or Cairo any way they like. And that's the point in defending Barack's pronunciation. It is polite to pronounce a word in the way that the locals pronounce it. So, when I go to Bourbonnais in Illinois, I pronounce it bur-bone-iss, but if/when I speak about Pakistan, I should say pah-key-stahn. The anti-intellectuals want it both ways: "pronounce our French city names the way the locals do, but then pronounce the foreign place names as we do too. The way the locals pronounce their place names is irrelevant 'cause we're Merikuns and our way is always right."
Posted by: lauram | October 9, 2008 7:03 PM
The one that's always thrown me off was the town of Gananoque, Ontario. Having some knowledge of French, I just assumed it was pronounced ga-na-NOAK. But, no. It's pronounced ga-na-NAW-kway.
And don't get me started on Port Dalhousie (dal-OO-zee) in the Niagara region.
Posted by: borealys | October 9, 2008 7:39 PM
Pronouncing words right? How dare he?!?
Really what is society coming to when people are looked down on for being correct?
Posted by: Kel | October 9, 2008 8:00 PM
Chancelikely wrote:
Heddle? MRoberts? Could you answer that, please? Please? Don't deprive me of this opportunity for homour!
Posted by: Valhar20000 | October 9, 2008 8:31 PM
Bob April-we only scratched the surface of place names in Indiana. And I do pronounce them as the locals do-if I know the correct pronounciation. I remember my first friend I made from the town of Dubois in Dubois county-I pronounced his town the French way. He corrected me with the local way; while saying that he knew my way was the original, correct, French way.
Another town that cracked me up is south of Minneapolis-Shakopee. I told a friend I was going to Sha-KO-PEE. I had to spell it for him and he told me it is SHAK-o-pee.
Posted by: Rev. AJB | October 9, 2008 10:27 PM
There are a lot of towns in the Midwest which are named for famous cities in other countries but given different pronunciations. Having lived there most of my life, I think a lot of that is not ignorance so much as convenience. I grew up near a town called Cairo which everyone pronounced with a short a (as someone mentioned previously). However, most of these people still pronounce the famous Cairo the proper way. Saying CAY-ro was just an easy way to indicate that you were going to the next town over and not Egypt.
@delurking: I don't know why you're getting so upset over this. The only "argument" here regards a bunch of ninnies who got their knickers in a twist because Obama tried to pronounce a country's name the way they pronounce it there. As a sinophile, I wince every time someone mispronounces a Chinese name (which they do constantly). Am I a hypocrite because I don't always refer to the country as Zhongguo? And what's your point, that because there is no absolute standard, we can pronounce foreign names however we please? Contrary to what you think, in many places pronunciation really does matter. Screw up a name in Chinese (excuse me, zhongwen) and you can really make an ass of yourself.
Posted by: D Johnston | October 9, 2008 11:20 PM
Both sides are making a mountain out of a molehill, in my opinion. Different languages have their own, generally fairly standardized, names for countries. It would sound stupid if, when speaking Spanish, I were to drop into an American accent to say "United States of America" or even "Estados Unidos de America", with an American accent on the last word. I'd use the Spanish pronunciation, because I'm speaking Spanish, not English. Likewise, in English, I'll say mek-sik-ko, not may-hee-ko (or even worse, attempting the original Aztec pronunciation ...)
Should one pronounce place-names arbitrarily, with no reference to the native pronunciation? No, but places that have been talked about in English for a while have acquired more-or-less standard English forms.
That said, so what if someone does choose to use a pronunciation closer to the native form? It would be a bit pretentious to bring in sounds that are not present in English, or things like tone for Chinese place-names, but using the closest equivalent in English phonemes, I don't see how that is a bad thing.
Posted by: Paper Hand | October 10, 2008 1:23 AM
And don't get me started on Port Dalhousie (dal-OO-zee) in the Niagara region.
It is actually pronounced "Pit of Despair". Do they still roll up the streets at 6pm?
I'm pretty lenient about pronounciations, except when they are flat out *wrong*, like "nukular". The Reich-wing's obsession with this kind of thing tells me one thing: Anyone who votes republican this time around can be accurately labelled as clinically insane.
Posted by: Graculus | October 10, 2008 8:50 AM
I spent 20 minutes trying to find 'MIL-en', NH on a map, until the person pointed out Milan, NH. A town or two North of there is 'BUR-len' (Berlin). At least the towns of Sweden, Mexico and Denmark (there are more, but I don't know how they are pronounced by locals) are spoken the accepted American way.
http://travel.mainetoday.com/onlyinmaine/thesign.shtml
Posted by: marlana80 | October 10, 2008 11:15 AM
I can remember that during the Reagan administration, most republicans pronounced "Nicaragua" as if they had a Central American accent -- for that word only. There must have been a memo. Either that, or they were being just a tad "elitist."
Posted by: wcs | October 10, 2008 11:29 AM
D Johnson wrote:
@delurking: I don't know why you're getting so upset over this. The only "argument" here regards a bunch of ninnies who got their knickers in a twist because Obama tried to pronounce a country's name the way they pronounce it there.
That's pretty funny. The point is I'm not upset, because all of the arguments are silly. The point of speaking is to convey information to your listeners. Obama's pronunciation got the point across just fine, as does the more "American" pronunciation. Those who criticized Obama's pronunciation are being ridiculous, just like those who praise Obama's pronunciation and then criticize the locals' pronunciation of Versailles, Indiana. If someone's pronunciation of, say, a Chinese place name does not get the point across, then that person should try to use one that does.
Posted by: delurking | October 10, 2008 12:10 PM
Let's not forget that one of Andy Schlafly's charges of "liberal bias" in Wikipedia was that many of the articles used "British" spellings like "colour."
Although I said this in another thread, I'll repeat it: the notion that pronunciation should be a function of spelling goes completely against the history of language. Written language began as a transcription of spoken language. Spoken language shifts more than written language (largely because once something's been written, it stays as written) which means that they can sometimes get out of sync. The assumption that older written language is somehow more "correct" than newer spoken language is just that, an assumption, and it has no real basis.
Everyone remembers "Throat-Warbler Mangrove" from Monty Python. Less well-known is that one of the next-to-last shows included a couple named Fanshaw-Chumleigh who actually spelled it that way; in reality, it would have been spelled Featherstonehaugh-Cholmondely.
Posted by: ebohlman | October 10, 2008 2:46 PM
I'm sorry, did she just use the term "flyover country" in the same breath as suggesting that pronouncing something properly was elitist?
Posted by: ChrisTheRed | October 11, 2008 6:13 AM