Ah, the World Cup 2026 and the joys it brings. The world's best athletes giving their all to the beautiful game, "guy who doesn't know what offside is" AKA Johnny American unironically saying "Yanno, this may be our year" and water breaks to fit in ads, because how else was I to learn that I can gamble on human suffering?
Ladies and gentlemen, could the state of the world be any better than it is right now? Surely not.
One thing I didn't expect at this WC though was a pronunciation change, you can imagine my bewildered American face when I heard the color commentators pronounce everyone's favorite European/Asian hybrid country TURK-E-A instead of Turk-ey like I had heard it pronounced my last 28 years.
Now, I ain't nobody's fool, I know a few years ago the country changed its spelling to Türkiye to better distance itself from the bird that looks like Mitch McConnell and Steven Tyler got Tuvix'd. A very good move that I not only like, but respected from the moment I first saw it.
What sacks my Constantinople is the insistence on pronunciation, I refuse to be beholden to such an outrageous ask. In the US we don't say Deutschland, Nihon and Suomi, we say Germany, Japan and Finland. Various countries and rogue nation states don't pronounce it "United States" or "America" in those exact words, so why do my friends and colleagues look at me like I committed crimes against humanity in the 1910s when I use the old pronunciation?
In the 2022 World Cup the same shift happened going from "Kuh-Tar" to "Cutter" for Qatar, but I remember that being way less of a stressed issue than Türkiye today.
This leads me to believe that like Labubus and democracy, pronouncing it Turk-E-A is also simply a passing fad. When July closes up, the Swedes clog back to Stockholm and the Scots let Bostonians drink again, those of us from États-Unis will forget about this just like rage comics and Sanjaya.
I'm not sure if this is the majority experience for most Americans, it genuinely might just be me. We'll have to wait for the results of the federal investigation on the matter I suppose.
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