28 February 2008

Dept. of Botched Pronunciation:
Whatever

DURING THE DEBATE between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in Cleveland on February 26, Tim Russert of NBC asked Clinton about the presumptive president-elect of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev. Stumbling over his name, Clinton let Russert do the pronunciation for her, saying after his correction, "whatever." Not exactly the approach I'd take to the name of the next head of state of Russia...

For Clinton and anyone else interested, the correct pronunciation is /mʲɪˈdvʲedʲəf/. (I originally thought the second "d" was more like /ʤ/, but it turns out there's considerably more nuance to the pronunciation, with the palatalized consonant /ʲ/, which I can't find any examples of in English.)

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