Craig dahling,

You have lost your status as a Douche. You see, you actually speak some of the languages in question. The only little bit of douche left in you is your pronunciation of “yiro”, which isn’t fricative (if I remember all of my terminology”. Put a ghamma before “ee” (there are a million ways to spell that sound, or maybe 5) and you get “yee” (with the “y” as in “yay!”), thus bringing you to the requisite “yee-ro”. Or I could be the Douche and that sound is, in fact, a fricative in linguistic speak.

The problem is that we Americans lose out on the foreign language education. We are not half as fortunate as foreigners in that aspect. Your point about Bush speaking Spanish is moot, however; I hope you’re not judging his abilities by his flawless pronunciation of “Fox”. Were you just being sarcastic?

Actually, our pronunciation of Iraq is just as close to the original as the Brits’. The “ay” in “ay-rak” sounds closer to the “ayn” in the Arabic. The British version does the correct vowel at the end, which darkens before the letter “qaf”. However, both nations lose out on that last consonant.

I disagree with your point that only a few sounds from other languages don’t exist in English. No sound in Arabic really exists in English; all the vowels are different, all the consonants are voiceless (is that the right term?), not to mention the downright weird ones (qaf, ayn, ghayn, DaaD, Taa’, SaaD, DhaaD). Even in Romance Languages, we don’t have those exact vowels, and all the consonants are voiceless again.

But back to my main beef: Douches who know nothing about foreign languages shouldn’t correct those who have worked hard to pronounce foreign words correctly. Some of us know when to ask for “yiro”, “döner kebab” or “shwarma”. One time I saw a Douche lose her cool at Starbucks (I guess she was in her element; I only go for their hot cocoa…I swear!). She asked for a large, the barista said, “You mean a venti?”, to which she replied all annoyed like, “Sorry, I don’t speak Spanish”. Really, the barista was WAY out of bounds assuming she could speak Spanish, the language of espresso machines.

So let us linguists join forces and fight Douches where’er they may be.
Take no prisoners,
Kamilia