How stupid and petty of David Coulthard. I am so tired of hearing him refer to Sebastian Vettel during commentary with the stress on the second syllable. Everyone else manages to say the name with the stress at the beginning, just as it should be said. This is not even an argument about whether the first letter should be taken as a 'V' or an 'F' when speaking in English. It is acknowledged that the German means an 'F' sound, but generally we don't go around saying "FolksVagon" do we? Anyway, that aside, why oh why does DC insist on saying Vettel's name wrongly? For the record, it is said:
Sebastian Vettel (German pronunciation: [zeˈbastian ˈfɛtəl]
So, what is DC's explanation for consistently mispronouncing it? Here's what he himself says:
"I pronounce my name as David Coal-thart; everyone else pronounces it a different way. So when I am pronouncing names wrong [sic] when I am doing the BBC1 F1 coverage, my defence is no-one ever says my name correctly."
What a petty twat.
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I agree, just because David Coulthard's name was pronounced incorrectly, doesn't give him the right to mispronounce Sebastian Vettel's surname. Recently Martin Brundle said to him "Vettel rhymes with kettle" and yet David STILL can't say Vettel. Commentators should know how to pronounce someone's name correctly. Heck, I have trouble pronouncing or even spelling Jamie Alguersuari's surname, but it's not my job to learn (although I'm trying!).
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