Özil's magic left foot -- or was it Oezil's?

Joel S. Berson Berson at ATT.NET
Thu Jun 24 17:03:55 UTC 2010


The New York Times spells German soccer player
Mesut Özil's name with a dieresis.  The
font-deficient Boston Globe and/or Associated
Press spell his last name Oezil.  So do they
think the language of this player of (I assume)
Turkish origin uses umlaut?  (Not an entirely
serious question and requiring no answer.)

The pronunciation I have heard (from what seem to
be quite-well-informed-on-the-challenges British
play-by-play announcers) is OH-zihl, but that's
not the German O-umlaut pronunciation. (Which I'm
finding a bit difficult to form as an initial
vowel.)  How is the Turkish Ö pronounced?

Joel

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