Apr 04 2009
Tomato, Tomato…
Barack says Pock-i-stahn, I say Pack-istan. I say Afghanistan and so does Barack Obama. What’s up with that? Why if we’re going to all the trouble to get the native pronunciation of Pakistan why don’t we go to the trouble to get Afghanistan right?
People have given Obama a hard time for his Pock-i-stahn and Tal-ee-bahn pronunciations. My question is why if you’re going to say both in the same sentence say them the same? You know there is some reason. I just want to know why. I mean it seems to me to be a bit pretentious… Like on Seinfeld when George is breaking up with his girlfriend, she tells him she wants the truth and he tells her the truth—she’s pretentious… (remember she says Pape-ee-AY-Mash-AY for paper mache and Sam-U-el for Samuel)
And if that’s the case that’s fine, but stop trying to make believe it’s something bigger than that—like you’re better because of it—because that is an elitist attitude. And it doesn’t make you better because of it, except in your own circle of Elitists…
Don’t bother watching the entire video, you can get the point in little less than a couple of minutes.
I really don’t care how you pronounce things. I’m American, I speak English, I can sound like a mug from the Bronx where I grew up at times—if I’m visiting or something (for the most part I’ve lost that inflection) But I don’t have an agenda for how I pronounce things, I say them how I say them. I am native to where I’m from and that’s how I pronounce things. It doesn’t make it wrong. I don’t think we need to pronounce things the way the natives from any particular place do in order to be somehow correct. That’s what’s supposed to make us in the world unique. I’m not interested in one world, one everything, I kinda like individuality. Accepting others for their differences not melding to become one indistinguishable blob of the same.
So I really don’t care unless we’re talking about mispronouncing something—that’s different, I would like to be told the correct pronounciation. But when I see something transparent, something that’s motivated by an agenda or something else I will question it—why? Because I’m basically curious.
Tomato. Tomato. I really don’t care.
—iChef Politikos
