World the biggest loser if Trump has his way

When I reported for an American newspaper – The Baltimore Sun - nearly 15 years ago, I was taught how to pronounce my English name. “Oh, Andrew,” they would always repeat pronouncing ‘a’ as ‘e’. Linguists term it /æ/-raising. It didn’t matter or it didn’t occur to my interlocutors that the British English which we use in most of Africa, doesn’t have that feature made when the tongue is raised up towards the roof of the mouth. Every American I met during my stay would repeat my name, but with a droll. Eventually, and I guess to save the Americans the pain of always repeating my name after me, I adapted the “e”.

A colleague - a German- exasperated by the Americans (they usually are) said that is how the Americans colonise the world. To him (and most of us agreed), nothing was so demeaning like an adult being taught how to pronounce their name.