Can You Say Kyrgyzstan?

Al Kamen writes for the Macaca Post:

Bit of a slip-up at the United Nations... Someone posted a [draft] of President Bush's... address on the U.N. Web site... complete with helpful phonetic pronunciations for various countries and people.

"The United States, salutes the nations that have recently taken strides toward liberty," the draft said, "including Ukraine, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan [KEYR-geez-stan], Mauritania [moor-EH-tain-ee-a], Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Morocco."

"In Zimbabwe," the draft said, "the behavior of the Mugabe [moo-GAH-bee] regime is an assault on its people," and the U.N. "must insist on change in Harare [hah-RAR-ray]."

I would have misprounounced both Kyrgyzstan and Mauritania (and probably still will). Neither one comes up in conversation much, after all.