Mar-a-Lago (English pronunciation: /mɑɹ.ə.lɑ.goʊ/) is an estate and National Historic Landmark in Palm Beach, Florida, built from 1924 to 1927 by heiress and socialite Marjorie Merriweather Post. Post envisioned the house as a future winter retreat for American presidents and foreign dignitaries, and following her death in 1973 it was bequeathed to the nation. However, successive presidents declined to use the mansion, which was returned to Post’s estate in 1980 and in 1985 was purchased by Donald Trump, later 45th President of the United States.
It was actually intended to be a sort of Chequers….
Marjorie Merriweather Post is a wonderful name, worthy of a delightfully bonkers maiden aunt as written by Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse.
English pronunciation: /mɑɹ.ə.lɑ.goʊ
Well I’m English and I have no idea how to pronounce an upside down r, an upside down e or the little vase at the end.
Mar-a-lago is Spanish for Lake by the Sea.
Try this, BobR
http://www.ipachart.com
The upside down r means that you trill it.
The upside down e is a sound somewhere between up and ap
The vase is a rounded o sound
its all greek to me
Actually, as I understand it IPA has it reversed: the upside-down r is the American r, not the French/German trill or the Slavic vocal flap.
And the o+upside-down omega should be a diphthong, right? The American o as in boat.
sounds foreign- so our beloved leaders will adore it.
Ms MMP was married to Joseph E Davies when he was US ambassador to the Soviet Union and big-time apologist for Stalin. The couple had a most profitable relationship with Uncle Joe, purchasing confiscated works of art at bargain prices. Sounds rather Trumpian as well as Wodehousian.
Diogenes,
thanks for that, jolly phonics, works great if English is not your native language, works like shite if it is.
Mar-a-lago
MAR-A-LAGO
FFS
MAR-A-LAGO (waves arms around a bit), are you thick or what ?
MAR–A–LAGO
yes that’s it
MAR–A–LAGO
Mar-a-largo, how hard was that.
Native English speakers learn to pronounce and spell between 3 and 5 thousand words, we learn some of the most obscure grammar rules known to man.
We colloquialise our spelling and pronunciation to actively discriminate who might live in our street/borough/town/county, it’s a trust thing.
Non-native English speakers haven’t got a clue what we use our spoken/written language for, if a picture paints a thousand words, a vocal inflection paints an entire history (and doesn’t involve upside down r’s or vases (that would be vase with an r, not vase with a y)).
Ruthless, isn’t he?
Donald Trump learned about the estate and offered $15 million. After the Post family rejected the offer, Trump claimed he had purchased (he didn’t purchase it until after he bought Mar-a-Lago) the land between Mar-a-Lago and the ocean and threatened to build a building that would block Mar-a-Lago’s beach view, which caused the Post family to accept his last offer of less than $8 million in 1985/
It’s a typical Trump deal.
He’s a kind of arbitrager of property investment and local government ‘influence’.
He buys strategic property that is blocked, then uses local and city governments to extort pressure onto the obstructions, and get planning decisions no-one else could get.
His election as the everyman’s man to drain the swamp is very much gamekeeper turned poacher.
He at least knows how the game is played.
Which puts him ahead of most presidents.
Sings “There’s only one Mar-a-lago, one Mar-a-lago…”
I can’t hear Mar-a-Largo without thinking Sean Connery is going to slip into his wetsuit in order to navigate past some sharks in order to rescue a few missing RAF nuclear warheads from Trump back pool.
(Before boffing Claudine Auger rather than Kim Basinger of course)
A POSThumous wish realised.
Sorry, could not resist.