Goof Reveals Phonetic Guide for Bush NEW YORK (Sept. 26) - How do you keep a leader as verbally gaffe-prone as U.S. President George W. Bush from making even more slips of the tongue?When Bush addressed the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday, the White House inadvertently showed exactly how -- with a phonetic pronunciation guide on the teleprompter to get him past troublesome names of countries and world leaders.
The White House was left scrambling to explain after a marked-up draft of Bush's speech popped up briefly on the U.N. Web site as he delivered his remarks, giving a rare glimpse of the special guidance he gets for major addresses.
It included phonetic spellings for French President Nicolas Sarkozy (sar-KO-zee), a friend, and Zimbabwe leader Robert Mugabe (moo-GAH-bee), a target of U.S. human rights criticism.
Pronunciations were also provided for Kyrgyzstan (KEYR-geez-stan), Mauritania (moor-EH-tain-ee-a) and the Zimbabwe capital Harare (hah-RAR-ray).
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said the draft, labeled the 20th version and complete with typos and speechwriters' cellphone numbers, had been turned over in advance to help U.N. interpreters who must simultaneously translate leaders' speeches into several languages.
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To be honest, speeches loaded into the teleprompters for all speakers at the UN have such phonetic spellings indicated in the text. I don't like Bush and I think he's not very smart but it was only fair to point this out...
theteach
