It’s bad enough to get our geographical bearings wrong (ahem, BBC), but it’s another thing to confidently print the wrong way of pronouncing the name of Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong — a statesman who’s been the country’s premier since 2004.
For the uninformed, Lee Hsien Loong can be simply pronounced “lee see-yan long”. Tongue-tied? Here’s an instructional video, complete with audio help.
The name is in no way enunciated like this garbled mess.
The bizarre gaffe was first brought up on Facebook by Daniel Peters, who believed that it was The New York Times who made the mistake. You can see it for yourself here.
A closer inspection, however, reveals that it was Associated Press that published the article — an ever-updating one that keeps track of all the developments of the summit. Being an AP article, that means that the story has been syndicated to dozens, if not hundreds of news publications. Meaning every single one of those outlets published the weirdly wrong way of pronouncing PM Lee’s name. Try it: just type “lee haz-ee-en lahng” on Google and boom.
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