Every single NBA fan enjoys Shaquille O’Neal’s antics in NBA on TNT. He’s been hilarious since he made it to the league and it seems like he always finds a new way to crack us all up.
‘The Big Aristotle’ has had a tough time with foreign languages. He couldn’t even pronounce Giannis Antetokounmpo’s last name well for the first 4-5 years he was in the league, and he clearly couldn’t congratulate him in Greek when he won the Defensive Player of the Year award.
That’s why the NBA on TNT’s crew tried to challenge him with a seemingly impossible task: pronouncing the name of Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, a village in Wales. The outcome, as you may imagine, wasn’t good:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CE3NUgxp53b
According to Business Insider, the small village is called like that out of the Church of St. Mary. The inhabitants put together a bunch of terminations and syllabus and came up with it:
“Let’s break that down: Parish [church] of [St.] Mary (Llanfair) [in] Hollow (pwll) of the White Hazel [township] (gwyn gyll) near (go ger) the rapid whirlpool (y chwyrn drobwll) [and] the parish [church] of [St.] Tysilio (Llantysilio) with a red cave ([a]g ogo[f] goch),” read the report.
Turns out that the town (also known as Llanfairpwllgwyngyll or Llanfair Pwllgwyngyll) only has 3,100 inhabitants of which 70% speak Welsh, a dying language (and we can see why). Notably, it “only” has 51 letters for them, as ‘CH’, and ‘LL’ are considered just one letter in Welsh.
As for Shaquille O’Neal, he better stick to what he does best: talking about basketball. It’s getting clear as crystal that he’s not exactly the most articulate people when it comes to talking foreign dialects.
