From Swami Vivekanon-non to Soo-chin Tendulkar: US President Donald Trump's epic mispronunciations of Indian icons

From Swami Vivekanon-non to Soo-chin Tendulkar: US President Donald Trump's epic mispronunciations of Indian icons

President Trump has a history of mispronouncing words. Previously he had come up with words like 'obselels' and 'appliculble'.

FPJ Web DeskUpdated: Monday, February 24, 2020, 08:48 PM IST
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Photo: AFP

On Monday Prime Minister Narendra Modi called Donald Trump his friend and 'India's friend' as the two leaders addressed a 1 lakh strong crowd at Gujarat's Motera Stadium, touching upon a host of topics.

Trumps praise for India, his denouncing of the menace of terrorism and his try at Hindi during his over 25-minute- long speech was well received by people and punctuated by constant clapping by the nearly 1.25 lakh-strong crowd.

His pronunciation of several iconic Indian names however have left people in splits.

Take "the great religious teacher Swami Vivekanon-non" for example. Trump stumbled over Vivekananda's name, coming up with rather strange variant.

But if you thought this was the only hurdle that the President had to cross, think again. Next up were some of the world's greatest cricket players -- from Soo-chin Tendulkar to Virat Kohli. Here, it would seem that even the ICC could not resist taking a dig at the President.

Not just eminent personalities, Trump also mispronounced the name of the Dharmendra and Amitabh Bachchan starrer Sholay. We're not quite sure what he was getting at, as the President appeared to trail off after the first half of the word.

Take a look at the video:

This is not Donald Trump's first mispronunciation.

From mangling the name of a Second World War general, Douglas MacArthur (Douglas Magarth) to creating odd words (covfefe) -- the President is no stranger to vocabulary pitfalls.

But what we've mentioned so far are, for the most part, proper nouns. And while unfortunate, one could perhaps argue that proper nouns can be pronounced as chosen.

What about obselels? Or perhaps, appliculble?

Both are words that the President fumbled over in 2019. In case you're still baffled, the actual words are 'obstacles' and 'applicable'.

Not just these, there have also been strange debates arising from Trump's mispronunciations. Let us remind you of the time he hoped officials would "go and take a look at the oranges".

More specifically, the "oranges of the investigation" that is to say, the "beginnings of that investigation". He was talking about the allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 elections. Trump also said that he wished the Mueller report had "covered the oranges".

But while most thought he had been going for the word "origins", White House transcripts seemed to suggest otherwise. An article by Mediaite quotes White House transcripts to suggest that it was a third word altogether. A hiterto unknown word -- 'oringes'.

But what's a word here or there when you're leading an entire country? After all Prime Minister Modi did call him 'Dolan Trump' at the Namaste Trump event.

(With inputs from agencies)

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