February 19, 2020

Amy Klobuchar gets a second chance to say the name of the president of Mexico, and she still can't say "Andrés Manuel López Obrador."

She pronounces "Andrés" as "Andre" — no "s" and the accent on the first syllable:



It's like Ron Blagojevich trying to prove to Donald Trump that he can name the houses in Harry Potter's Hogwarts School:



He says "It's Slithering and it's Hufflepuff and it's Ravencloth." But it's Slitherin and Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw.

Blagojevich only needed to impress Trump. (He failed.) There were no Hogwarts voters to feel alienated by his inability to pronounce Hogwarts names.

Klobuchar needs to impress Hispanic voters, and saying "Andre" for "Andrés" feels as though you have no experience with people who speak Spanish.  Or even just the Spanish language, with its super-simple pronunciation rules. The way she grins while saying it wrong is so disturbing.

ADDED: If you keep watching the Klobuchar clip — which I finally did — you'll see she proceeds from her proud pronunciation of the name to blathering about why she got it wrong, and it's the worst possible answer! She says she'd had a very long busy day, and she was tired. She lists events "ending about 2 or 3 in the morning."

3 in the morning! That's the precise time that we've been saying a President needs to be ready to go, completely up for the most challenging tasks!

108 comments:

Jersey Fled said...

Well, I guess that's it for Amy then.

Owen said...

Agree, her demeanor is as lame as her accent. And both are as lame as her explanation for why she couldn’t answer the question the first time. She had had a long day, doing the People’s Work and preventing POTUS from starting a war with Iran? I’m impressed, Amy, you stayed up late to do all your homework, you get extra stars.

Something fundamentally missing with her...

lonetown said...

As a person of Scottish surname which is invariably pronounced wrong, get the eff over it!

alanc709 said...

Someone ask her Putin's first name. Bet she says "Umm" at least 3 times.

Beasts of England said...

(With apologies to Tony Joe White)

Up in Minnesota where the staplers grow so mean,
There lived a girl so fierce, made the Walleye look tame,
Comb Salad Amy,
Comb Salad Amy

Bill, Republic of Texas said...

How difficult is it to just remember and say "AMLO."

traditionalguy said...

She's fired.

stevew said...

Shows a lack of respect, which comes from failing to take the time to know the name and how to pronounce it correctly; this always shocks me when done by a professional politician, especially one running for national office. Are all hispanics insulted or just Mexicans? Note that a pol from my hometown, Boston, would totally butcher the pronunciation, all while believing he nailed it.

Temujin said...

A non-issue. If she ever got to be President, she'd have dozens of people whispering in her ear to get all pronunciations correct. Obama calls a corpsman, 'corpse-man' and they loved him for it.

Hagar said...

Bernie is a prophet, perhaps, and a scold, but not a leader. The rest of them are just followers.

Ann Althouse said...

"Are all [H]ispanics insulted or just Mexicans?"

How about everyone who took Spanish class in high school? We're all disturbed.

RichardJohnson said...

She pronounces "Andrés" as "Andre" — no "s" and the accent on the first syllable....Klobuchar needs to impress Hispanic voters, and saying "Andre" for "Andrés" feels as though you have no experience with people who speak Spanish.

Pronouncing "Andrés" with an emphasis on the first syllable is a Spanish language flub. However, there are many Spanish-speaking areas that drop the "s" at end of words, such as much of the Caribbean.

tim maguire said...

Not knowing his name may be a problem for her. Messing up the pronunciation is probably not.

gilbar said...

wait; wait A MINUTE
are you saying that French and Spanish have different rules? Are you saying they're different languages?
HOW would someone from St Paul know that?

Jaq said...

Sucking up to voters by faking knowing their language is a kind of spam, I am happy she is above it. But Comb Salad Amy... She is always gonna be that in my mind from now on.

Lance said...

“It's like Ron Blagojevich trying to...”

You just lost fhe Sebian-American vote.

David Begley said...

She’s a racist.

alanc709 said...

Spanish has simple rules for pronunciation, but various subgroups of spanish-speakers alter those rules. For example, LL, pronounced as Y normally, is pronounced as J (or hard G) in some spanish cultures. So colloquial usage makes spanish not as simple.

Wilbur said...

My high school - a Catholic high school - did not offer Spanish. It was Latin or French. I opted for four years of Latin drudgery.

I wish now I had taken French.

Why would anyone - including "everyone who took Spanish class in high school" - expect her to handle a foreign language with any skill at all? Including our fellow citizens for whom Spanish was their first language? If you're upset or offended you're just looking to be.

And if you're not a citizen, tough shit. You can't vote anyway.

Browndog said...

Fake outrage.

No serious person is "insulted".

Browndog said...

Blogger Wilbur said...

My high school - a Catholic high school - did not offer Spanish. It was Latin or French. I opted for four years of Latin drudgery.


Lutheran high school. 2 years of Latin. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Fernandinande said...

I've met a bunch of people from Mexico and SAmerica and never met anyone from anywhere named Andres, so I thought Andres = Andre, and that it was French, like Andre the Giant, so the 's' is extraneous.

But I think it's cute that people don't know or mispronunciate the name of the president of a corrupt shithole country.

gilbar said...

Look, I've Always said; that Everyone NEEDS to know, at least Two Languages

You need to know English; so you can communicate with the rest of the world,
and you need to know your parents language; so you'll know when your mom calls you to dinner

And IF you were Smart, in choosing your parents; those two languages are the same

exhelodrvr1 said...

Comb Over?

D.D. Driver said...

What's Aleppo?

On one hand I am very sympathetic to anyone who has their blindspot exposed in a very public and embarrassing manner. We all have thing we don't know that we should know.

On the other hand, the name of the president of the US's number global trading partner? How can you possibly run for president and have that be your blindspot?

On the third hand, I bet she knows the names of all of the European leaders. Maybe not, but I wager money that she does. So, what is the difference between López Obrador and Boris Johnson or Angela Merkel or Macron? Other than the obvious thing...that...umm...you know...Johnson, Merkel, and Macron do not lead the United States' number one trading partner?

Things that make Arsenio go "hmmmmmmmm...?"

Tommy Duncan said...

But she's the best age (59), she's female, and she's got a long record in the Senate. That's what really matters.

Masscon said...

So was she saying that when originally asked and didn't know the name she really knew it but couldn't recollect it as she was too tired? I can relate but I don't believe it! To me, the poor pronunciation demonstrates that she did a little studying after her flub, just enough to learn all four names, but not enough to learn the correct pronunciation.

Fernandinande said...

Pronouncing "Andrés" with an emphasis on the first syllable is a Spanish language flub.

That's also proper pronunciation because it's not just a Spanish name.

MadisonMan said...

Bet she can say the swede name Andreas with no problem.

Jaq said...

I think Trump has learned the hard way that our criminal justice system stinks.

https://twitter.com/TrumpWarRoom/status/1229893781325045763

Browndog said...

Amy Klobuchar at the Culinary Union forum: My name is Amy, but when I was in fourth grade Spanish they gave me the name Elena.

Beto shrugs.

Darrell said...

Blago can give details about the bribe Obama was negotiating with him for the vacated Illinois Senate seat--until the FBI tipped off Obama that they were recording Blago's phone calls.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

What kills me is the dumbed down guy-next-door question she can't get right. When it's a Bush or a Trump the Mediaswine questions are about pissant Euro bureaucrats and they are expected to KNOW the answer and PRONOUNCE it correctly. She can't get the name of our freaking next door neighbor right, even with a mulligan! How presidential*...NOT. Didn't she even know enough just to say AMLO (pronounced am-LOH)? Nope. She's kinda not that bright is what it looks like.

*Wait! Didn't she just vote for the USMCA bill in the Senate? And she still doesn't know that it was AMLO lobbying for it to pass?

Browndog said...

I don't want to jump the gun, but the Blago thread on Althouse is going to be lit.

Fernandinande said...

Just watched the video, she did the French pronunciation, but without the Frenchiness ("swallow" the A).

Kevin said...

3 in the morning! That's the precise time that we've been saying a President needs to be ready to go, completely up for the most challenging tasks!

I can't wait for Hillary to start dropping "Andrés Manuel López Obrador" in interviews and speaking events.

Not that she's running for anything, but she never says never.

Eleanor said...

In a few weeks, Klobuchar will be just another senator who tried and failed to run for president so who cares?

Limited blogger said...

The Mike Bloomberg show premiers tonight, so who cares about Amy K.?

narciso said...

amlo is the way his friends know him, lopez obrador is not a mouthful,

Sally327 said...

I don't think Spanish as a first language speakers will care too much that she left the "s" off or that she pronounced his full name like she had to learn it phonetically because they expect that from white people and she is as white as they come. They might be put off by the condescending tone and gargoyle like leering though.

narciso said...

not so much more like a spring pilot

Howard said...

I don't understand what with all the winning, you people are in constant Pufflehuff mode. You should be Julie Andrews singing on the mountain.

narciso said...

in more local news

Beth B said...

Why is this woman constantly doing that squinty thing with her eyes? It makes her look like French Stewart on Third Rock from The Sun. All that's missing is the fun fur coat!

narciso said...

the state atty, mentioned above, has let justice laps on a gruesome murder,

RichardJohnson said...

sally327
I don't think Spanish as a first language speakers will care too much that she left the "s" off or that she pronounced his full name like she had to learn it phonetically because they expect that from white people and she is as white as they come.
Point well taken.

narciso
amlo is the way his friends know him, lopez obrador is not a mouthful,

"AMLO" would have been the way for someone not conversant in Spanish to finesse calling him by his full name. However, she probably didn't even know that many called him AMLO. Wanting to appeal to an ethnic voting group without knowing much about that group is a long-standing problem for American politicians. Bob Dylan so informed us in a verse from I Shall Be Free.

Now, the man on the stand he wants my vote
He’s a-runnin’ for office on the ballot note
He’s out there preachin’ in front of the steeple
Tellin’ me he loves all kinds-a people
(He’s eatin’ bagels
He’s eatin’ pizza
He’s eatin’ chitlins
He’s eatin’ bullshit!)

RichardJohnson said...

sally327
I don't think Spanish as a first language speakers will care too much that she left the "s" off or that she pronounced his full name like she had to learn it phonetically because they expect that from white people and she is as white as they come.
Point well taken.

narciso
amlo is the way his friends know him, lopez obrador is not a mouthful,

"AMLO" would have been the way for someone not conversant in Spanish to finesse calling him by his full name. However, she probably didn't even know that many called him AMLO. Wanting to appeal to an ethnic voting group without knowing much about that group is a long-standing problem for American politicians. Bob Dylan so informed us in a verse from I Shall Be Free.

Now, the man on the stand he wants my vote
He’s a-runnin’ for office on the ballot note
He’s out there preachin’ in front of the steeple
Tellin’ me he loves all kinds-a people
(He’s eatin’ bagels
He’s eatin’ pizza
He’s eatin’ chitlins
He’s eatin’ bullshit!)

Chuck said...

I’ll just leave this here while we enjoy a simultaneous sip of delicious covfefe:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MjZHDcKCA-I

Speaking of the Nevada caucuses, does anybody remember Trump lecturing a crowd of Nevadans In 2016 on how to pronounce “Nevada,” except that Trump was explaining it the precisely wrong way? I think about half the country gets the pronunciation wrong, to the ears of Nevadans, who like a flat “a” and dislike Nev-AH-duh. So for Trump to get it wrong in normal speech would have been a non-story. But that’s not the Trump way. Trump wants to be the smartest guy in the room. (Even when, as President of the United States and, apart from family gatherings he is surrounded by increasingly talented people and is thereby often the most clueless person in the room.). And so Trump took to lecturing a crowd about he had learned that it was pronounced “Nev-ah-duh.” With the crowd basically yelling “No,” and Trump being the butt of his own incredible joke.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2016/10/06/politics/donald-trump-nevada-pronunciation-harry-reid/index.html

narciso said...

the media pretend clem kadadiddlehopper and jo jo kennedy, have anything like a mastery of the Spanish language, just say you're trying but don't pretend, ted cruz, rarely speaks Spanish because he hasn't kept that skillset sharp

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

Howard said...
I don't understand what with all the winning, you people are in constant Pufflehuff mode. You should be Julie Andrews singing on the mountain.


At some deep subconscious level they know that their party, the party of law and order has become the party of crooks and thieves. Trump's family are a bunch of crooks, his son in laws family, another bunch of crooks, most of his associates, also crooks. Trump has no respect for the law, he is Roy Cohn in a fat suit.

Owen said...

Excuse me: I am no genius at language and proper pronunciation, but I humbly submit that the test by which Ms. Klobuchar should be judged is, simply, how does Obrador himself say his name? That can't be that hard to ascertain. And to master. So that, if you are asked --as inevitably you will be asked, as perhaps you asked to be asked, so you could rehabilitate yourself with your voters-- who is the President of Mexico, you can answer the damned question perfectamente.

This was a lay-up. She had every opportunity to nail the answer. And...she blew it?

WTAF?

Something fundamentally missing with her.

narciso said...

she was out of salad, can you leave her to eat her tortilla?

hawkeyedjb said...

Wait 'til they ask her about the French president, Manny Macaroon.

Curious George said...

Klobuchar is on the Senate immigration committee and she couldn't name the President of Mexico. Yeah, let's make her president.

Leslie Graves said...

Perhaps Amy is playing 4D chess and her real audience is suburban white women in the upper midwest (the swing voters!) who might think to themselves, "well...I didn't know you had to put an 's" at the end either."

narciso said...

and the newest contestant, in the iowa apps sweepstakes is reid Hoffman, tell them what you won don pardo,

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

The modern Republican party.

Trump poses with ex-San Francisco 49ers boss Eddie DeBartolo Jr. after pardoning him for conviction over paying $400,000 to win a riverboat casino license

narciso said...

and jon Corzine, 'lost' 1.6 billion, and was never charged, and he was an Obama bundler, same for cassano, and other subprime tycoons,

MadisonMan said...

Why isn't Klobuchar 50 points ahead!?

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

Draining the swamp:

Trump issues pardon to tax-evading executive whose family paid his campaign over $200,000

"construction executive Paul Pogue, who was sentenced to three years probation after evading $473,000 in taxes."

According to The Daily Beast, “Pogue’s family has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars in direct contributions and in-kind air travel to the Trump Victory Fund. Beginning in August 2019, Ben Pogue — CEO of Pogue Construction and son of Paul Pogue — and his wife Ashleigh made over $200,000 in contributions to the campaign.”

JML said...

The GPS has a lot of trouble here in NM giving turn by turn directions: Right turn on JAY-mez ah-vay need ah, followed by a left onto Cal-lay Dee Bern-ah-lill-oh...

MadisonMan said...

Chuck writes: I think about half the country gets the pronunciation wrong, to the ears of Nevadans, who like a flat “a” and dislike Nev-AH-duh.

You've never visited the county seat of Story County, Iowa.

Howard said...

All his friends call him Chuy.

gilbar said...

You've never visited the county seat of Story County, Iowa.


That's the problem with living in iowa, names like
madrid
comanche
eldorado
tripoli

are hard on you when you go outside, and have to learn the weird ways outsiders pronounce things

stevew said...

Here's the difference: she is not being criticized for poorly speaking Spanish (to pander to the Hispanic crowd as Kerry did to the global crowd by speaking french) she is attempting to say the proper name of the top government official of Mexico. She couldn't do it, that's just a politically poor, sloppy move on her part.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

Why didn't she just say President Obrador? That's his title and his name.

She didn't need to try to show off (pander) and try to pronounce all of his names. Foreign leaders don't say Donald John Trump or William Jefferson Clinton. ( Actually his name at birth was William Jefferson Blythe III)

Title and Name are all you need.

K I S S

hawkeyedjb said...

"the weird ways outsiders pronounce things"

Or insiders. There's Des Moines, Iowa: Dee Moin. And there's Des Plaines, Illinois: Dess Plains. Also known as the City of Destiny.

Gunner said...

Why is Klobo always showing her legs? No one wanna see that!

tcrosse said...

"the weird ways outsiders pronounce things"

Wayzata, MN. Pronounced wye-ZETT-a
New Prague, MN, pronounced to rhyme with plague.

Rory said...

That clip takes you to "Do you want to look at this for four years?"

narciso said...

and at 3:AM, she was thoroughly sloshed, she did make it to the dss control center the next day, then lied about it,

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

Shit, not being a network TV watcher, I’ve never heard Blago’s or Klobie’s name said aloud and would be guessing at the correct pronunciation. There’s a ton of words I’ve seen in print for 40 years that no one ever actually says. Good God, try reading a history of the Peloponnesian War. It’s like Linus reading The Brothers Karamazov.

frenchy said...

Klobuchar is a horrible communicator.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

Call him Labrador. Claim it’s an affectionate nickname. How Trumpian would that be?

RK said...

If I don't know a Mexican's names, I just call them Speedy Gonzalez. And if they're old and slow, it's kinda funny.

RK said...

Us Minnesotans are never taught to roll our R's, so we'll never the get pronunciation right anyway.

NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...

Why is it such a calamity when a non-Spanish speaker doesn't use a correct Spanish accent to pronounce a Hispanic persons name? I've met plenty of Spanish speakers, quite a few actually from Spain, and none of them seem capable of pronouncing my name with a correct American English accent.

Granted, Klobuchar is running for President and should make and effort to pronounce the names of foreign heads of state correctly, but still...

Wince said...

Kublakhan's mere presence is extremely off-putting.

Ken B said...

It’s a myth that Spanish has uniform or simple rules for pronunciation. Castilian differs from Argentine differs from Peruvian differs from Mexican differs from ...

Char Char Binks, Esq. said...

Just call him President López. That is enough.

n.n said...

Pronunciation is important. Will she run guns to Mexico? Will she back another Syrian civil war? Coup in Kiev? Will she Gaddafi another world leader because, run guns to Syria, and thrown in an ambassador for good measure, and abandon Americans? Will she force catastrophic anthropogenic immigration reform? Borrow from granny, sustain progressive prices, and share the responsibility? Will she progress political congruence ("=") and other Pro-Choice doctrines of the Chamber?

Chuck said...

2/19/20, 8:33 AM
Blogger Dust Bunny Queen said...
Why didn't she just say President Obrador? That's his title and his name.


His proper last name and entitlement as you say is President Lopez Obrador. And Althouse got it right in her name-tagging him.
(“Lopez Obrador”).

Nichevo said...

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...
Howard said...
I don't understand what with all the winning, you people are in constant Pufflehuff mode. You should be Julie Andrews singing on the mountain.

At some deep subconscious level they know that their party, the party of law and order has become the party of crooks and thieves. Trump's family are a bunch of crooks, his son in laws family, another bunch of crooks, most of his associates, also crooks. Trump has no respect for the law, he is Roy Cohn in a fat suit.

2/19/20, 8:00 AM


It's great how you people self-refute. Even better when you do it in counterpoint.

Ice Nine said...

>>Blogger hawkeyedjb said...
"the weird ways outsiders pronounce things"
Or insiders. There's Des Moines, Iowa: Dee Moin.<<

Actually, "Dumoeen"

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

Nichevo said...
self-refute


Simply saying something doesn't make it true.

Amadeus 48 said...

With all these Demmies, it is always 3:00 AM in the dark night of the soul.

AllenS said...

For God's sake, give little Amy a break. She eats a salad with a comb, and now you want her to roll her r's?

TrespassersW said...

Remember the US map recently making the rounds where a German had penciled in what he thought were the state names? The lesson there (for those willing to learn): Furriners are just as ignorant about the United States as we are of their countries.

As a corollary: How many times have you heard a furriner mangle--and I mean MANGLE--English pronunciation? The lesson (for those willing to learn): We ALL have trouble pronouncing words that are not from our mother tongue. Even political hacks like Klobuchar.

I'm the opposite of a Klobuchar fan, but her flubbing this is not a big deal. (OTOH, the lame attempt at an excuse was lame.)

TrespassersW said...

Blogger Dust Bunny Queen said...
Why didn't she just say President Obrador? That's his title and his name.

I'm waiting for someone to run them together and call him "President Labrador."

Amexpat said...

Bad prep again. She obviously was waiting for an opportunity to say his name to make up for not knowing it the last time. She made a point of saying the full name instead of the shorter acceptable version. This was to point out that she's really on the ball. But she dropped it once more.

Too bad as I'm rooting for her to do well.

LordSomber said...

It’s a myth that Spanish has uniform or simple rules for pronunciation. Castilian differs from Argentine differs from Peruvian differs from Mexican differs from ...

...Cuban?
The one Andres I know pronounces it without the 's'.

buwaya said...

No Mexican-American that I have ever known cared about Mexican politicians.
Mexican politics is seen as disgusting and everyone mixed up in it is a scoundrel.

Making a point of mentioning Mexican politicians is useless vis-a-vis the Mexican-American vote. Perhaps it is a virtue-signal to the white intelligentsia.

Or possibly also the Mexican-American intelligentsia, such as it is. I doubt many of them could name the President of Mexico either.

Mexico is, at most, for most, for family and entertainment. They generally dislike Mexico. Thats why they are in the US, not in Mexico.

What they are for are each other, those Mexicans in the US.
Mexicans are very tribal vs other "hispanics".

Clyde said...

The president of Mexico? It's El Presidente.

LA_Bob said...

I think this is much ado about nothing. It's really about kicking a loser when she's down just because she's down and expected to stay there.

Senator Aimee Klobrador will never be president.

buwaya said...

His proper name is Lopez Obrador. Thats the fathers "apellido", Lopez, plus the mothers, Obrador.

It is possible to contract it, and properly he is Lopez. What is commonly used in Mexico itself, in conversation, I don't know. What his friends and family call him, I dont know either. Whats certain is what is used in local journalism isn't it.

Funny bit - his given names, Andres Manuel, have been rearranged. He was born Manuel Andres. I'm guessing he grew up answering to Manuel or some of the many nicknames of that. But then his contraction would have been MALO - bad. Not good for politics. So he switched Manuel and Andres around.

Marc in Eugene said...

At work, I sometimes deal with native Spanish speakers and we can usually get to where we need to go; people are often amused or puzzled (and occasionally gratified, apparently) when I make the effort. But I'm not a US senator with more or less 250,000 Spanish-speaking constituents. I didn't look up the US Spanish speaking population because we all know AK isn't going to be elected president.

Big Mike said...

Klobuchar needs to impress Hispanic voters, and saying "Andre" for "Andrés" feels as though you have no experience with people who speak Spanish.

Well she’s from Minneapolis so she’s probably more interested in getting the pronunciation of Somalian names right.

Chuck said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
buwaya said...

There is that quirk in the Spanish naming system where the mothers name can stand out, being more distinctive than the fathers. It is so here, Lopez being common as dirt. Obrador is much less common, though not rare (meaning "laborer", one of many Spanish names, as also in English, based on an ancestors employment. I knew a fellow named "Ballesteros" - "of the crossbowmen").

Thats why even in English it is usual to refer to Federico Garcia Lorca, not Garcia. Though it is usual even in Spanish to refer to Miguel Unamuno, not Unamuno y Jugo.

buwaya said...

Puerto Ricans also often suppress the "s".

Rory said...

"to blathering about why she got it wrong"

She doesn't claim that she got it wrong because she was tired. She says the name now and explains that she was tired then, but doesn't make a connection between the two.

Drago said...

ARM: "Simply saying something doesn't make it true."

And so went the "Great Awakening" meme into the abyss......

wbfjrr2 said...

Bitchy Amy (as her employees can testify) is intellectually mediocre.

Nichevo said...

Does AMLO suffice for purpose of media gotchas?

Yancey Ward said...

For those unaware, you pronounce big C Chuck's name "Shit for Brains".

DavidD said...

3 in the morning!

Isn’t that the precise time Ambassador Stevens was trying to call Hillary at the State Dept.?

Lance said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Bunkypotatohead said...

A month from now no one will remember her name either.