Why does Obama say Tolly-bahn and Pocky-Stahn, and not Talleban and Packi -stan?
For a real American brought up in America speaking American English the way Obama says these words would be an affectation.
Obama doesn't say Pahree for Paris or MAHSkou for MahsCOW - so it can't be that he likes to sound like a native when saying foreign words in English.
He is either deliberately showing the Taliban and Pakistan SPECIAL deference by going out of his way to say these words like them (when he makes no such attempt with other foreign words), or he is revealing something about himself: that he learned these words a long time ago from people who spoke them in their native language and not English and these pronunciations are ingrained in him.
It could go back to his childhood growing up in Indonesia. Or his college years at Columbia when he roomed with and hung out with Pakistanis. (He even "vacationed" in Pakistan during this era.)
In any case, it's patently un-American. Sounding. At least.
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