Is "Guantànamo" [sic] better than "Gitmo" [sic]?

Can content be trusted over form?

The acute accent mark is a diacritic used to denote pronunciation stress that deviates from standard pronunciation in many modern written languages with alphabets based on Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts. In today’s New York Times‘ Week in Review piece by Jonathan Mahler, “WAR POWERS: Why This Court Keeps Rebuking This President,” “Guantànamo Bay” is not the same as Guantánamo Bay. It’s disappointing to read an article as careless in content as it is in orthography. Spanish speakers shouldn’t depend on the likes of El País for intelligent and clean op-ed pieces.

“The second ruling, in Rasul v. Bush, came soon after the scandal at Abu Ghraib. Though momentous, it was still limited. The court found, 6-3, that Guantànamo Bay was within United States jurisdiction and subject to its laws, meaning detainees there were entitled to some sort of due process in American courts. It didn’t specify the process, nor suggest that Congress couldn’t amend a law through which detainees could access the courts.”

Advertisement