I give people a lot of slack when it comes to the Arabic language, as it is considered one of the most difficult languages on the planet. In my previous life I was a news reporter, and when I reported on countries all over the world, I looked up the phonetic pronunciations because if I was going to talk about those places in front of millions of viewers on television, I better say those words correctly! Sadly, this is not the case today in politics and mainstream media. You have pundits who advocate invading countries they can’t even pronounce, and reporters who give cringe worthy pronunciations of countries as they try to “educate” us. So while I give the general public lots of slack, these guys on television have no excuse! So, I decided to make a video on some of the most mispronounced Middle Eastern foods, countries, and names. Hopefully you will find this “coffee talk” useful, and if you have a name people mispronounce all the time, feel free to leave it in the comments below!
