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USNAviator
11-02-10, 02:46 PM
With the Marine Corps’ 235th birthday around the corner, there’s one Marine with a message he hopes will resonate during the traditional celebrations this season. Battle Rattle met Patrick T. Brent, a businessman, freelance writer and former officer, in early October aboard the amphibious assault ship Makin Island, where he joined sailors, Marines and officers for San Francisco Fleet Week events. For Brent, it was an opportune time to reiterate a pitch he has been making for the past year or so: reminding folks of the correct pronunciation of that famous division commander and 13th commandant, Lt. Gen. John Archer Lejeune (http://www.tecom.usmc.mil/HD/Docs_Speeches/MCbirthdaymessage.htm). It’s “LUH-JERN,” insisted Brent, friend of the family whose lineage of leathernecks continues in today’s modern Corps.

In the ship’s hangar deck for a senior leadership seminar, Brent grabbed a pen from his jacket pocket and handed it to Battle Rattle. He felt compelled perhaps to make a correction. The three-side pen, in homage to the late commandant, provides this reminder: “The Greatest Leatherneck of them all.”

Brent said the correct pronunciation of Lejeune – the name, he insisted, has an absent “R” – is really all about showing respect for Lejeune (http://www.tecom.usmc.mil/HD/Whos_Who/Lejeune_JA.htm), born in Pointe Coupee, La., and credited with saving the Marine Corps in the post-World War I. He feels strongly about his mission as a friend of the Lejeunes, who hail from a French-Creole region in Louisiana where the invisible “R” is part of the name’s pronunciation. He dismissed complaints from naysayers who reject his interpretation and insist on saying it, Leh-june, and offered this: “How come we don’t have a problem with the word ‘colonel’?”

And speaking of words and Marines… don’t ever refer to George P. Schultz (http://www.hoover.org/fellows/10657/short-bio)as a former Marine. The respected statesman and economist, now a fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution in nearby Palo Alto, Calif., served in the Marine Corps during World War II and left as a captain. “I am NOT a former Marine,” the 89-year-old Schultz forcefully reminded the seminar crowd shortly after his introduction. “I am a Marine. Ooh-rah!”

Vandrel
11-02-10, 02:52 PM
9 years of service and I will forever say "Leh-june", there's no freakin R

stretchusa
11-02-10, 02:55 PM
9 years of service and I will forever say "Leh-june", there's no freakin R
No "R" in Colonel either, it is about how the man pronounced his name. Most people like their names pronounced correctly, Leh-jurne IS how you pronounce the name in Louisiana, which is where he was from.

advanced
11-03-10, 08:57 AM
No "R" in Colonel either, it is about how the man pronounced his name. Most people like their names pronounced correctly, Leh-jurne IS how you pronounce the name in Louisiana, which is where he was from.

In the south they would say "Cul-nul So and So, suh."

stretchusa
11-03-10, 01:41 PM
In the south they would say "Cul-nul So and So, suh."
Not all the south, accents differ region by region, state by state. For example; a New Orleans accent sounds somewhat like an NYC accent, but a west Texas accent sounds completely different. However they are both in the south, just different accents.

advanced
11-03-10, 01:44 PM
I know, thanks.