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

[Mark Mandel]

According to Wikipedia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesut_%C3%96zil> he's
"of Turkish origin", but a native of Germany. The optional substitution of
"oe" for "o"+dieresis is longstanding in German* but AFAIK is not an option
in Turkish. From the WP article:

The title of this article contains the character ö. Where it is unavailable
or not desired, the name may be represented as Mesut Oezil.
Full name     Mesut Özil
Date of birth     15 October 1988 (1988-10-15) (age 21)
Place of birth     Gelsenkirchen, West Germany
Current club     Werder Bremen

Mesut Özil (German pronunciation: [ˈmeːzʊt ˈœzɪl], Turkish: [ˈmesut ˈøzil];
born 15 October 1988 in Gelsenkirchen) is a German professional footballer
of Turkish descent[2] who plays for Werder Bremen and the German national
football team.

* Diachronically, it's actually the other way 'round. The umlaut double-dot
originated as a scribal abbreviation, writing the "e" over the "o" (or "a"
or "u") instead of after it.

m a m

On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 1:03 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:

> 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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