President George Bush is about as eloquent with the English language as a wildebeest in heat. And so his speech writers try to help out by including phonetic spellings for some of the more difficult words which might clank out of his pie hole.
While such a practice was generally assumed it wasn’t fully confirmed until earlier this week when the White House staff accidentally released an uncensored version of Bush’s speech to the General Assembly of the United Nations. Amongst the normal rhetoric and chest beating vernacular was the following handful of phonetic spellings for various countries, cities, and foreign leaders:
Kyrgyzstan [KEYR-geez-stan]
Mauritania [moor-EH-tain-ee-a]
Harare [hah-RAR-ray]
Mugabe [moo-GAH-bee]
Sarkozy [sar-KO-zee]
Caracas [kah-RAH-kus]
I really want to mock Bush here, but I suppose that a few of these could actually be difficult to pronounce without some helpful hints. But come on, shouldn’t the President at least know how to pronounce the name of his French counterpart as well as the capital of Venezuela?