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

[Wilson Gray]

I've checked with four native-speakers of Turkish of my acquaintance
and the American-born son of one of them. IMO, Turkish o-diaresis is
approximately the same sound as German o-diaresis. Indeed, when
Atatuerk romanized the spelling of the Turkish language, he borrowed
the letter, o-diaresis, from German. It's also the case that "umlaut,"
i.e. vowel harmony, is a living process in Turkish. Were the vowel of
the second syllable of Ozuel's name, e.g. _u_, then his name would be
_Ozul_.

No-way-hozay do "real" English speakers give a damn about the correct
pronunciation of non-"American" names, anyway, even when they
themselves bear them. Everybody knows that. Cf., e.g. former mayor of
NYC Cotch, in addition to people in Saint Louis  and in Cincinnatuh
also surnamed "Koch" who use the pronunciation, "Cook." "Tolliver" was
once _Tagliaferro_. Even a simple name like _Blum_ [blum] is
pronounced [bl^m].

Besides, it's only soccer! WTF? Who cares!Does anyone besides me know
or care that the World Cup teams that beat Mexico and England were
made up of a large number of St. Louisans or that Saint Louis was once
considered to be the soccer capital of America or that the St. Louis
Catholic Youth Council (CYC) Soccer League was once the largest in the
country?

-Wilson
–––
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"––a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
–Mark Twain

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