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

[Dan Goncharoff]

Names in Germany have to be approved by the government, so I expect the
first letter of the last name is officially an umlaut.

DanG

On 6/24/2010 4:04 PM, Mark Mandel wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society<ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Mark Mandel<thnidu at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      =?UTF-8?Q?Re=3A_=C3=96zil=27s_magic_left_foot_=2D=2D_or_was_it_Oe
>                zil=27s_=3F?=
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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 =C3=B6. Where it is unavai=
> lable
> or not desired, the name may be represented as Mesut Oezil.
> Full name     Mesut =C3=96zil
> Date of birth     15 October 1988 (1988-10-15) (age 21)
> Place of birth     Gelsenkirchen, West Germany
> Current club     Werder Bremen
>
> Mesut =C3=96zil (German pronunciation: [=CB=88me=CB=90z=CA=8At =CB=88=C5=93=
> z=C9=AAl], Turkish: [=CB=88mesut =CB=88=C3=B8zil];
> 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 =C3=96zil'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 =C3=96 pronounced?
>>
>> Joel
>>
>>
>>
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